


The Youngblood Chronicles

by stylesofstraight_edge



Series: The Youngblood Chronicles Compendium [1]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Youngblood Chronicles, Angst, Anxiety, BAMF Andy Hurley, BAMF Joe Trohman, BAMF Patrick Stump, BAMF Pete Wentz, Bisexual Pete Wentz, Blood and Gore, Brainwashing, Cannibalism, Dark fic, Deliberately Disrespecting Religion, Demon Patrick Stump, Dismemberment, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Andy Hurley, Hurt Joe Trohman, Hurt Patrick Stump, Hurt Pete Wentz, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Past Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz, Kidnapping, Low Self-Esteem, M/M, Making Out, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Murder, Negative self-image of mental illness, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Not a ton of fluff, Pete Wentz makes bad jokes, Pete Wentz's Suicide Attempt (Best Buy Incident), Pining, Post-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Protective Pete Wentz, Questioning Patrick Stump, Slow Burn, Torture, but it is there, morality crisis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2020-05-16 13:38:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 60,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19319293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stylesofstraight_edge/pseuds/stylesofstraight_edge
Summary: The Defenders of the Faith knew that it was a bad idea to choose them to protect something so important. They knew it was a worse idea to agree to the responsibility. They knew there was an excellent chance something would go horribly wrong.But wrong couldn't encompass how bad things had gotten. There wasn't a word strong enough to describe one of their own being kidnapped, dismembered, god only knew what else. Pete, Joe, and Andy knew they had to act fast if they wanted to save Patrick and the astronomical secret he had been carrying.But they were just a shitty pop punk band from Chicago going up against the strongest force of evil that music had ever seen. What chance did they have?A retelling of the Youngblood Chronicles with a generous helping of Peterick and a lot of angst.





	1. The Phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first band fic! This is the fun product of my mild obsession with the very dark and somewhat ridiculous world created by the SRAR videos. Badass female characters? Excessive violence? Heavy gay subtext? What more could you ask for?  
> This is essentially just an in-depth version of the Youngblood Chronicles music video series with lots of introspective monologues and generous amounts of Peterick. It most likely won't strictly adhere to canon but should follow the same basic trajectory for at least the first half. There will still be plenty of new dialogue and development that couldn't be in music videos for obvious reasons. Enjoy!

I fully recommend you close this page now. No, really. This is not for the faint of heart, the weak of mind, or the easily discouraged. This is your last chance to turn back. I advise strongly that you reconsider your decision.

You’re still here?

Interesting. I suppose I should make you well aware of the promise you’re committing to. You have to see this through. You’re promising our heroes that you’ll stick with them until the bitter end, that you’ll join them on their journey, that you won’t desert them when things get messy. You’re in, 100%. That, or you’re quitting now. There is no middle ground.

You need to know that this is not a romance, a comedy, an action-packed thriller, or a horror story. There is love, laughter, risks, and monsters, but it is, for all intents and purposes, a tragedy. Horrible things will happen to good people. Heroes will get taken down by the bad guys.

But suffering is not meaningless. Some of the greatest moments in history were born in tragedy. You have to find out if their quest goes down in flames, and more importantly, if it will rise from the ashes.

They made a promise when all of this started.

Now you make the same vow. You will fight through until good prevails or evil conquers. If you can’t do that, turn back now.

I guarantee that’s the smart thing to do. Maybe you should just walk away.

Maybe that’s what they should’ve done, too.

But if this responsibility, this risk, this dangerous adventure excites you, by all means, follow me. You think you can do it. An understandable mistake. Patrick, Pete, Joe, and Andy thought the same thing.

••••




The room was dark, the dim light filtering in not nearly enough to break up the heaviness of the unspoken promise between them. This was it. Once the code was punched in, there was no turning back. It didn’t bother Patrick as much as it maybe should have. Every decision he had made, every mountain the band had climbed, was all leading up to this. This was their purpose. Nothing would ever be more important, and he couldn’t bring himself to dread the responsibility despite the myriad of horrible possibilities it created. He couldn’t stop the smile that split the serious expression he was forcing onto his face. They were _chosen_ for this. They were ready. He was sure everything would be fine. The four of them together could do anything. They were a team, and they would not fail now. 

“We ready?” Patrick breathed, knowing the answer but feeling this was too big a thing to be rushed.

“Fuckin’ born ready,” Pete replied definitively. Patrick rolled his eyes.

“We all know the risks? The danger? We’re all prepared to put everything on the line?”

“Yes, Patrick, get on with it.” Joe bit back.

“Andy?” Patrick asked.

“I’m ready,” Andy assured him.

“Okay.” Patrick’s heart was beating so fast he was convinced the other men could hear it. His hands slid over the smooth glittering metal of the briefcase, and he took a moment to still his trembling fingers before setting the pins to the right numbers. The dim yellow glow of the overhead lamp gave way to a burning white ray of light emanating from inside the case as Patrick carefully raised the lid. He could’ve sworn the world stopped turning for a moment as they all stared in awe. Every second that the contents were exposed was a threat to the mission, and they knew that, but they couldn’t bring themselves to look away. Eventually, Patrick remembered how to breathe, and carefully shut the lid again.

The words were in the air, but no one spoke them. _Why us?_

Patrick supposed the reasons were secondary to the mission. “We need to do whatever we can to protect this.”

“Obviously,” Joe responded.

“So, what’s the game plan?” Patrick observed the knowing look on his friends’ faces and let out a loud sigh. “Oh c’mon! Why do **I** have to do it?”

“Because you’re our fearless leader, Trick, duh. It’s your moral obligation. Honor demands it.” Pete had that dumb grin plastered across his face, the one he saved for moments when he knew he was going to win.

“How do you propose I defend it, Pete? I’m 5’5, I have glasses, and I wear fedoras! I’m not exactly the picture of intimidation!”

“I’m way ahead of you, buddy.” Before Patrick could begin another protest, Pete had taken the handcuffs from his back pocket and attached Patrick to the briefcase. In disbelief, Patrick tested the strength of the chain by yanking as hard as he could on it. He succeeded only in carving an angry red line into his wrist.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Why would I kid about such a serious situation?” Pete replied, a trace of friendly mocking in his voice. “You and your fedoras may not make enemies shit their pants in terror, but fear not! You and the case are now destiny-bound unless someone’s crazy enough to cut your hand off.” Patrick’s tone gained a hysterical note.

“Um, cuts my hand off?!” Patrick knew that Pete would never intentionally put him in danger, but he also knew that his friend didn’t always think ahead and consider all the possible outcomes before making a decision. This was too big a decision to make without thinking it through. That was usually Patrick’s job, but that job was especially hard to do when Pete didn’t consult him before doing whatever the hell he wanted.

Pete came strapped with ideas and dreams, wearing armor made of bulletproof ambition. Patrick cut him down to size when necessary with his cinderblock feet of sensibility. It worked. It always had. In many ways, Pete and Patrick were made for each other. Pete was the parts of him he wished he had the guts to show, and Patrick was the pieces of Pete that Pete wouldn’t even know what to do with if they were his own. Patrick kept Pete’s feet on the ground, and Pete showed Patrick how good the weightlessness could feel. Pete was his person.

And he trusted Pete. He did. But with how little they knew about the mission to begin with, there was a real possibility that he was in danger severe enough that the threat of losing a hand was very real. How could Pete be sure?

He couldn’t be. Patrick would trust Pete with his life, but for the first time he may be _literally_ trusting him with his life.

“It was a joke, Patrick. No one’s gonna cut your hand off. Calm down, we won’t let anything happen to you. We’re the Defenders of the Faith. All of us. We’ll stick together.” Joe assured him with a confidence that Patrick did not feel.

Patrick was so sure about being ready, about being chosen. But now that he was face to face with it… there was a sliver of fear he hadn’t felt before. The _what-ifs_ were running wild in his panicked brain, but he forced a smile. He could do this.

He **had** to be able to do this. There were no other options.

“But just in case,” Pete reminded, “we all remember what the signal is?”

“Code Phoenix,” Andy responded with a tone more serious than anything Patrick had ever heard from him. Pete nodded solemnly.

“Keep your eyes on the skies, boys. It’ll _fly_ right under the radar,” Pete told them with a wink, snorting at his own joke. Patrick had made his opinion on Phoenix well known. He thought it was contrived and needlessly complicated. If they got into genuine danger, tuning out the real world to scan the skies for a sign soaring through the clouds was a recipe for disaster. But the ones who had chosen them were adamant about a form of communication that couldn’t be intercepted. They said the Defenders had reason to be paranoid, that they needed to take every possible precaution.

And oh boy, Patrick couldn’t think of a better thing to say to Pete Wentz than ‘You **should** be paranoid.’ God knew that boy would worry himself into a heart attack before he hit 40.

As shitty and stupid as Patrick felt it was, he knew the alternative solutions were limited.

“Right. Code Phoenix. So you all can avenge my severed hand.”

“See, Patrick gets it. Go put on your war paint and enjoy that hand while it’s still attached.” Pete teased. Patrick groaned as he picked up the briefcase and opened the door to leave the room.

“Anyone wanna ask why this asshole has handcuffs lying around in his back pocket?” Patrick groused as he led them out of the only safe place left.

••••




Even walking down the street was nerve-wracking. It was hollow comfort that someone couldn’t just steal the case out of his hand. He wasn’t used to this kind of responsibility. He wished one of his bandmates could’ve come with him, but he just kept on keeping on, telling himself he’d be fine.

Sure, imminent danger, very little protection, priceless cargo that had catastrophic consequences if it ended up in the wrong hands. Harmless. What did he have to worry about?

 _Pete wouldn’t put you in danger._ Not on purpose, at least. Patrick had enough experience with Pete’s impulsivity to understand the unintended consequences that often followed his good intentions. Patrick was checking over his shoulder every few steps, white-knuckle grip on the handle pulsing pain through his stiff fingers. Call him paranoid, fine, but no one was taking him by surprise today.

Patrick silently lamented the little information he had about the mission. He didn’t know nearly enough about what he was holding or the enemies who so desperately wanted it. Assuming the worst was the only way to be prepared. He knew he could be worried for nothing, but he could also be a dead man walking. He thought the latter was significantly more likely.

 _Put on your war paint,_ Pete had told him. _Be who they need you to be. Paint on the brave face and get it done_ _._ Patrick stared straight ahead and reminded himself it was a safe neighborhood and not every shadow had evil intentions for him. The entire fate of the mission rested on his shoulders. He couldn’t afford fear. Not right now. His friends were counting on him. The ones who chose them believed in him. Patrick was going to prove them right.

In his self-absorbed state, he didn’t really notice the utter silence that surrounded him. He didn’t notice, that is, until a kid on a bike rounded a corner and rode towards him. The sound of his tires against the pavement was the only thing breaking the eerie silence.

Surely there should’ve been birds, cars, something making noise. Patrick supposed the goings-on of this neighborhood weren’t his concern. He forced a distracted smile for the child. A wide, gap-toothed grin split his face and dark brown eyes were set alight with some emotion Patrick couldn’t identify. It sent a chill down his spine and contributed to the growing boulder of dread that sat in his stomach.

Tearing his attention from the boy, Patrick took a deep breath and made to continue on his path when an electrical current lanced through his body, shooting wide arcs from the side of his neck. The gasp of pain was trapped in his throat as his limbs locked up and he fell hard to the concrete sidewalk. “Hey, Youngblood,” a feminine voice purred in his ear. That was the last thing he heard before he took the invitation extended by the black abyss to drag him down with it.

••••




Consciousness came back to Patrick slowly, fear expanding like a balloon as pieces of information fitted themselves together to explain where he was and why. Taser, bike, ‘Hey Youngblood’, the balloon was breaking his ribs and the panic locked his chest tight around it. He couldn’t see, couldn’t get up off the chair he was chained to, couldn’t breathe, and slow, lurching movements were all he was capable of.

“He’s awake.” A woman’s voice observed.

“Fuck you," are Patrick's first words in captivity, trying to take the edge of hysteria off his voice, but the bag over his head muffled his speech beyond recognition.

“You know,” another woman said, “he does have a beautiful voice.”

“Shame he wastes it on singing,” the first woman replied. Patrick knew they were talking about him. Why were they talking about him? And who were _‘they’?_

“Especially when he could be using it for screaming,” taunted the second woman. Patrick clenched his teeth against the terror. There was little ambiguity about their intentions now. They snatched the bag from off his head and Patrick choked on the sudden availability of air. He blinked in the dim light turned harsh by the darkness he had been used to. His captors looked at him the way a predator does a cornered, wounded animal. Mostly disinterest with a shadow of evil intent. Patrick knew the handcuff was still attached, could feel the cold metal biting into his skin, but when he gathered the courage to look at it, the chill injected itself straight into his blood and he froze. His hand was drawn out from his body on a table. Not a table. A cutting board.

 _Couldn’t be a cutting board_ , Patrick thought. _Joe said they’d protect me. Pete was kidding._

“Who are you?” Patrick asked as calm as he could, all things considered. He was pretty sure he’d be dead soon, so the information didn’t matter much, but he’d still like to know. The woman in front of him, clad in all black, grinned while the one behind him responded.

“Your worst nightmare, I’m guessing. Or some other similar evil trope. It doesn’t matter much who we are.”

“But,” the one he could see added, “when your friends ask you later, I suppose you can call us the Vixens.” He jerked his left arm, the handcuffed one, back and forth to distract them from the progression of emotions that pulled at him violently from every direction at the mention of the others. The bind showed no more sign of giving than it did when Pete first put it on. Pete, fuck. Pete, Joe, and Andy, they said Patrick would be seeing them soon. The idealistic part of him had hoped they’d kill him and leave his friends alone. But he should’ve known. With the drastic nature of the thing they were trying (and apparently failing) to protect, things were unlikely to be so clean and painless.

“No, don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t go after them.” She gave him a pitying smile.

“Hun, even if I wanted to listen to you, this is bigger than me. Quite a bit bigger than you, too. The plan’s in motion, and nothing you say or do can change that.” A slight shiver ran through Patrick’s body, but it didn’t get past the woman. “Scared, Patrick?” _Terrified, actually._ He thought, but didn’t voice a reply. “You don’t have to answer me, it’s right here in those pretty blue eyes,” she told him, sweeping his bangs out of the way to stare into his soul, just inches from his face.

Patrick would’ve loved to tell them just to cut the cuff. He wanted to tell them he had nothing to do with the whole thing, that he was just a messenger, that he couldn’t give them whatever they wanted. But he had adopted the purpose as his own, promised his life to the cause, and he couldn’t give up at the first sign of danger. God only knew what people like this could do with the contents of that case. Even if he thought they’d believe him, have mercy, and allow him to continue living with both hands attached, he couldn’t give up on the mission. He couldn’t lie to save his own skin. He was a Protector; he took a vow. He had to see it through.

He had to get away. But with right arm tied to waist, waist tied to chair, and left arm on a literal chopping block, the options were nonexistent. He had to get back to the guys, had to call a Code Phoenix, had to keep this hand. He needed this hand to play guitar. He needed this hand for a lot of things. The woman behind him jerked his head back violently and ran her hands through his strawberry blonde hair with a displaced gentleness that unsettled him more than the threats. A cold, sharp thing was held to his throat and he did his best not to think about their intentions for that instrument. Patrick’s breathing was quick and shallow as the helplessness burnt his veins like acid.

“Get away from me,” he gasped. It was so much worse with their hands on him. Every touch added to the dread, and he wished desperately for words that could convince them to stop. He pleaded for help in his head, from Pete, Joe, Andy, God, those that had chosen them, anyone.

“Why don’t you use the power of music to save you, Patrick? Where’s the noise when you need it?”

“Silence the noise,” the one behind him growled.

“Silence the noise,” the woman in front of him agreed. He dared to look at her, actually look at her, and was struck by how normal she seemed. Ignoring the circumstances, she was just a girl, couldn’t be older than twenty, slender and wrapped in leather with a strip of skin showing at her midriff and nowhere else but her face. Short brown hair curled behind her ears and framed a sweet face fractured by a sharp smile. Her eyes, one green and one grey with a bit of violet, were stone cold and shone with a deep-seated hatred that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

He directed his gaze back down and away from her, drinking in deep gulps of air and trying to ignore the way he felt those eyes read him. Like they knew everything. As if she already had him all figured out. 

“Do you miss your friends yet?” She asked, voice smooth like honey as if she cared about the answer. “They’ll be here soon, don’t worry. But we need your help to set up the welcoming party.”

“Leave them out of this,” he pleaded.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Joe, Andy, and your favorite, Pete? ‘Leave them out of this’, how cute. You can’t save them. Or yourself, for that matter.” Her small frame shook with laughter as she moved toward his left hand, making sure he saw the huge meat cleaver in her hand. The hands of the woman behind him wrapped around his shoulders as her liquid whisper reached his ear.

“You might want to look away for this part, baby.” Loathe as Patrick was to admit it, she wasn’t wrong. His whole body was trembling as he tried to steel himself with steady breaths, turning his gaze toward the floor. The woman with the mismatched eyes made an annoyed noise.

“Oh come on, really? Hold still. You don’t want me to miss.”

Hysteric thoughts ran through Patrick’s mind as the future became an unavoidable certainty. _Pete, why? Why? **It’s not his fault. He didn’t know.**_ Then the knife came down and who was to blame became the least of his problems. Skin and tendons and bone gave way to the edge of the blade and Patrick felt every nerve light up in vicious pain. Warm red spray dripped down his face but he hardly even felt it against such a wall of agony. Patrick’s scream rang off the walls of the expansive warehouse, and he tasted blood. He screamed his throat raw, until the sound wouldn’t come anymore, and yet the pain echoed through his bones.

“Yeah, yeah. Make all the noise you want. No one can hear you where you are.” The woman rolled her eyes at him, his blood drying in droplets all across the left side of her face. Seeing she had his attention, she gave him a smirk and ran her tongue along the dull side of the knife.

It hurt. It burnt through his body and set his nerves on fire. He hardly had the stomach to look in the direction of his severed hand, and when his eyes finally made it over, there was too much blood to even really see what was left. But he could feel it. He could feel that there was nothing there, and the fear persisted in his chest long after the screaming stopped.

“Are you done now?” She asked him, sounding annoyed and bored.

“Not a bad sound,” the one behind him told her. “Better than the singing.”

“Let’s see what other sounds he can make.”

••••




The Vixens ran an efficient operation. Each moving part had its pace, purpose, and position in the grand scheme of things. So once the calling card was, ahem, acquired, Jaye was sent out to deliver the message within the hour. The child, labeled a prodigy by any of those who mattered, blended right into the background as he was taught to. The inconspicuous plastic bag hanging from his bike handle, no one would’ve guessed what he was up to.

Meanwhile, Pete Wentz was wracking his brain for what the hell this woman’s name was. She was a decent lay, blonde hair like he had a tendency towards ever since Ashlee. Though, if he was being honest, he preferred a bit of strawberry in it now and did his best not to examine the reasons for that. A nice face, body even better, but name… not a clue. He remembered it being something unremarkable, just like she was. Emily? Rachel? Fuck. Thankfully, the doorbell bailed him out.

“Sorry, I have to get that.”

“No worries, baby. I’ll be here.” _Baby?_ He hated it when they got attached. He knew what getting attached meant. It was much safer not to. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he made his way through the hall, feeling less antsy with every foot put between him and ‘baby’. When he opened the door, there was no one behind it. Brow furrowing slightly, he was about to mumble an old-man sentence about the irritating youth of the neighborhood when he noticed the bag hung on the knob. Far too curious to let a thing like that go, he took it off and peered inside.

The bag nearly fell from suddenly numb fingers. A gasp escaped his paralyzed throat and he slammed the door shut with more force than he thought was left in his body. “Trick,” he breathed, disbelief draining the color from his face. “Shit, no.” He forced his stiff legs to carry him back to the bedroom. He didn’t even spare her a glace. “You need to leave.”

“Excuse me?” Her voice was angrier than he expected. Usually, they got teary when he kicked them out, though he had been slapped more than once. He was convinced if that was the route she chose, he wouldn’t even notice the sting of it. His mind was already far outside of the walls of the house, running wild with every horrible possibility that could’ve befallen his best friend in the foolishly long time since they had last spoken. Why hadn’t he checked up on Patrick? Why hadn’t he noticed that the signal should’ve come hours ago?

“You heard me. Get out. I had my fun and now I want you gone.” She stood and he saw her bare feet make graceful contact with the floor as she closed the distance between them. “If you wanna hit me, get on with it, but get the fuck out.” Her hand came across his face and snapped his head to the side, but as expected, he didn’t feel a damn thing. She stooped to pick her clothes up off the floor and stormed out of the room.

Pete waited for the sound of the door snapping shut behind her, memories of the crazy bitches who stowed away in the house long after he kicked them out making him more than a little paranoid. Then he let the grief send him to his knees. He stole one last glance at the contents of the bag and forced the bile back down his throat.

The hand couldn’t be mistaken as anyone else’s. Pete was very familiar with the fingers that picked out melodies on Patrick’s guitar, the nails chewed down to the beds, a habit Patrick had since they first met, the knuckles that had brushed away Pete’s tears when he broke down, and the palms that had made strong, steady contact with his shoulders when he drifted too far. The Fall Out Boy logo drawn in sharpie eliminated any denial Pete could’ve thrown at the devastating truth.

The drawing had been a ritual for years. It started as a joke because Patrick was terrified of needles and Pete never missed an opportunity to annoy his friend. _Your first ink, Trick._ It wasn’t long before he was making the mark before every show, every big decision, every moment worth a damn. Pete had drawn the good luck charm himself just hours before the fateful moment when they took up the torch, foolishly believing they could handle it. It had taken under a day for them to be proven wrong.

Pete could hear Patrick’s voice in the back of his head, his reservations about being the one to guard the case, the edge of fear in his voice when Pete had handcuffed him to it. He allowed himself a moment of blind, furious self-hatred. For being so selfish, for not taking the danger on himself, for his ignorance, his impulsiveness, his colossal failure to protect his friend. They had promised to keep him safe, promised him he wouldn’t be alone in this.

Now Patrick was somewhere, alone and afraid or maybe even dead already. In pain, crippled, broken, all because Pete couldn’t see two feet in front of his own face. If he had thought this plan was anything less than as safe as it could possibly be, he wouldn’t have dreamed of putting Patrick in that position. But intentions weren’t worth much when the rest had gone to shit.

Despite knowing this was the most important thing he had ever been trusted with, he hadn’t taken it seriously enough. Patrick always told him he wasn’t bulletproof, that bad things sometimes happened and Pete had to learn to be more careful. Of all the times to start listening to Patrick’s advice, then would’ve been helpful.

Patrick was right, not that that was anything new. Pete now had to call a Code Phoenix to avenge his severed hand. For God’s sake.

Pete took a deep breath, ending the chain of self-blame before it consumed him. It didn’t matter what happened, it didn’t matter why, it mattered what he could do now. No more stupidity. No more impulsivity. He was going to take this seriously. Patrick needed him, and nothing else mattered anymore. Every minute he wasted was one more minute Patrick was alone with the enemy.

The fierce emotion that continually punched him in the stomach was stuffed down as far as it would go, and Pete made his way to the roof of the building. Code Phoenix. Get the bird, get the guys, there was a protocol in place for exactly this kind of situation. All he had to do was keep his head and get it done. Phoenix’s comforting weight left his hand and Pete watched her soar into the clouds with just a few powerful flaps of her wings. He swallowed hard and prayed this plan would work. The guilt that was eating him alive didn’t matter. They needed to act fast if they wanted to save Patrick.

What was left of him, at least.

Andy Hurley checked the skies one more time as he exited his car and made his way through the parking lot. There had been no word one way or the other since Patrick had been sent out with the case. He knew there was no real reason to worry. Despite his sometimes childish nature, Patrick was the best of them. He was the smartest person Andy had ever met. The mission couldn’t be in better hands. There was still no sign of Phoenix, and Andy breathed a short sigh of relief. It didn’t mean they were in the clear, but it soothed his frayed nerves a bit to know there was nothing definitively wrong yet.

It would all be over soon. The case would be in a place the enemy could never reach, Patrick would be back with them where he belonged, and Fall Out Boy could rest easy with the knowledge they were part of one of the most important things music had ever seen. The pressure would be gone, and they could go back to their lives.

He glanced up one last time, just to ease the nagging feeling in his gut. That’s when he saw it. Soaring majestically through the sky, it couldn’t be mistaken as anything else. He stood frozen, gaze stupidly locked on the bird as it made its way across the blue expanse above him. Not just any bird. Phoenix.

Andy was checked out from his surroundings as he tried to remember what he was supposed to do next. His brain was consumed with the reasons for the ICE plan to be put in effect and refused to be torn away. He was drawing a blank on the procedure, despite how many times it had been drilled into his head. Maybe that’s why he didn’t notice the vehicle that had driven up in front of him.

Andy would have time later to be annoyed with the fact Patrick was right about this. The thing that was supposed to keep them safe saw him completely disengage from his environment. His usually razor-sharp instincts were a dull and ineffectual blade, one that did nothing to free him as he was tackled into the black van in front of him. Shooting pain ran through his shin as it cracked against the running board, and his muffled groan was ignored as he was driven away.

••••




_Put on your war paint,_ Patrick thought to himself. The blinding light, glimmering scalpel, and medical masks left little to the imagination. _Put on your war paint, your brave face, they need you to survive._

“Want me to tell you which organs you can live without?”

 _Ignore the pile of death-worshipping garbage_ _._ The woman with the mismatched eyes was quickly moving to the top of Patrick’s shit list. Given, the list wasn’t very long, but it did take a lot for your name to be added to it. She had more than earned the right.

“Don’t worry, they taught me how to do this. I’ve had lots of practice. I’ll take good care of you.” Patrick didn’t open his eyes. It seemed especially unnecessary to make himself aware of exactly what was about to happen. Metal rang against metal as they made their preparations, and he did his best not to let his mind wander to the blame he wanted so desperately to thrust upon Pete.

They had made this decision together. They had taken on the danger together. If it hadn’t been him, it would’ve been one of the others, and he preferred this to them taking his place.

That was what he wanted to believe. In truth, he would’ve done almost anything to avoid the fate awaiting him. Patrick tried to force selflessness upon himself, altruism replacing anger, but he couldn’t help it. He was scared, he was angry, and he wanted someone to blame.

Pete was usually an easy person to blame. Patrick knew it was his own fault as much as anyone else’s, but if not for Pete, he very much doubted they would’ve taken his hand. _Quit pouting,_ Mismatch had told him after he had finally calmed his screams. _It was quick. She wanted us to flay it first. I thought that was excessive._ She brought the glowing red metal down on his open wound and continued monologuing over the shrieks torn from his throat. _And now I’m saving your life. You’d bleed out without me. You should be thanking me._

The chill of the metal scissors against his chest as they cut his shirt down the middle jolted Patrick out of his reverie. His eyes snapped open and Mismatch put a finger to her lips, obscuring the smirk, sharper than the scalpel in her hand, that lay behind it. Said scalpel met his skin at the right hip and sliced quick and sure up to his navel. Patrick’s hand gripped the metal bar of the gurney so hard his knuckles ached as he tried to stem the hyperventilation, clenching his teeth and keeping his eyes locked on hers. She didn’t even try to hide the smirk.

“Little things like this will feel so fucking good by the time I’m done with you.”

Patrick did his best to ignore the way that dropped shards of ice into his stomach. These people were very obviously insane, and nobody had prepared him for an outcome like this. He didn’t have any training for _you’ve been captured, mutilated, and will most likely be tortured to death._ A fleeting, petty thought ran across his fried brain, that if the people who trusted them knew something like this was possible, the least they could’ve done is tell him what he’s supposed to do.

How do you respond to something like that? Patrick sure as shit didn’t know. So he went back to staring into the woman’s cold, multicolored eyes.

It didn’t make him feel better to watch her. It’d probably be more comforting not to bear witness to the mutilation of his body, but he couldn’t seem to tear himself away. He wanted to know this woman. He wanted to get inside her brain the same way she already had with his. The utter lack of emotion both puzzled and terrified him. He wanted to see her feel something, wanted to see how long it would take before her hand started to shake, before her eyes betrayed the coldness she projected. She couldn’t possibly be as hard as she acted. Patrick wanted whatever was still human in her to see him, see what she was doing to him, and he wanted it to haunt her for the rest of her life.

It distracted him some from the pain, and he supposed hate is a good enough thing to keep a person going. Better than most. The next cut went from his left hip upwards to meet the other. He could feel the warm blood cascading down his sides and pooling underneath him as he sucked in another trembling breath. As the heavy pain settled deep inside his skin, he tried not to let his brain travel any farther than the expressionless void of her face. She pressed a hand down hard where the two lacerations met, and a small frown turned down the corners of her mouth as Patrick grunted with the pressure.

“I wish you’d stop breathing so much. I like nice, straight lines.” She told him, as if she was asking for a favor. When her hand didn’t leave him, he reached the one he had left to push her away. She smiled, a pitying quirk of the lips as she reached across him and dug her nails into the bloody stump where his left arm ended. He let out a bloodcurdling scream then, pulling the edges of the cuts further apart and failing to keep his breathing under control. She blew a kiss his way as she reached for her scalpel again, not minding the blood in the least.

The third cut made its way from his navel all the way to his collarbone, and not a moment was wasted as she peeled the skin back from each side of the cut and down the middle. Salt in the wounds, boiling in the blood, acid on the nerves, air touching his organs was a pain too horrible for words. It couldn’t get worse. Nothing had ever been worse. The noise he made didn’t sound to him like his own, but he felt the rawness in his throat as it was released into the empty room, filling the air, pushing the silence into the far corners.

And it wasn’t… he couldn’t… he couldn’t fucking breathe and he was half sure he was dead already. The oxygen robbed from his lungs, heart too weak to keep the life inside, and her hand was inside him. Each breath in was ice in the cavity, each release stretching him a bit too far. The other woman made her way to stand above his head, and held his mouth and nose closed until the breath burned in his chest. Eyes wild, he begged her silently to let him breathe.

“Shh. Okay, breathe in on three.” She counted down and then released him for a moment. He inhaled instinctively before she quickly pinched his airways shut again.

“Hold it. Can’t have you falling asleep, Patrick.” He struggled against her hands, paying no attention to the agony that burned through his body at the movement. “Alright. Let it out now.”

She patiently repeated the exercise until the danger of passing out had faded, Mismatch making curious eye contact with him all the while. He couldn’t help the fear that lit his eyes as the threat of suffocation was continually forced upon him.

“I told you, we know what we’re doing,” Mismatch told him, nodding approvingly at the other woman as she stepped away from her victim’s body. Unfazed, she reached back into Patrick’s body and started sawing through tissue and muscle with surgical precision. Worse. So much worse.

"You will beg for death before the end, rebel."

••••




Joe Trohman had found that mundane tasks kept him from worrying about the lack of communication from Patrick. So he went to the gas station despite still having half a tank, because really, what else was he supposed to do? Stare at his phone waiting for a signal he knew wouldn’t come? No calling, they had said. No texting, no emails. If you need to talk about it, do so in person in a place where you don’t run the risk of being overheard _. Great fucking plan,_ Joe thought, _unless literally anything goes wrong, and then we’re up shit’s creek without a paddle._

He was pretty sure something had gone wrong. But how could he know when they **weren’t allowed to talk to each other??**

It was frustrating. And it was fueling his nicotine habit. Patrick would yell at him. _Well, Patrick’s not here, is he? He’s God-knows-where because nobody will fucking tell me._ There were bigger problems in the world than Joe sucking cancer into his lungs, and that’s exactly what he would tell Patrick if he saw him again. When he saw him again.

Because fuck you, paranoia, and your doomsday bullshit. Patrick was fine. He had to be fine. He was _Patrick_. He always knew what to do. Even if something had gone wrong, there were contingencies and emergency protocols and Joe had been keeping his eyes peeled for Phoenix since the moment Patrick left his sight. He took a deep drag and blew the smoke towards the lights above him. _We’ll all laugh at this someday,_ he told himself. As he brought his gaze back down to take the pump out of his car, the movement caught his eye.

Well, fuck.

Joe shook off the chill that wanted to creep down his spine and tried not to think on it. Code Phoenix. Okay. The rest was unimportant. The why, what happened to Patrick, irrelevant. Joe shouldn’t waste his thoughts on things he couldn’t change.

Easy to say, harder in practice. Patrick was the leader. Patrick was the one they put their trust in, wicked smart and resourceful with a heart of gold. Joe never thought anything could actually hurt Patrick. The kid was resilient, stubborn, and Joe had always thought he was untouchable.

Clearly, he had thought wrong. Despite his best efforts to ignore them, worst-case scenarios for Code Phoenix ran rampant through his head. Something bad had happened to Patrick. The mission and his friend were both in jeopardy. Now was not the time to panic. Get to Pete’s, find Patrick, save the world. _Not the world,_ Patrick’s voice reminded him in the back of his head. _Just rock and roll._ Easy enough.

He returned the pump to the machine and ground out his cigarette with the heel of his shoe. Patrick was always there when they needed him. Each and every one of them. Day or night, even if they were in the middle of a fight, if you needed Patrick, he made time for you. Patrick needed them now. _So why are you still at the gas station, Trohman?_

He didn’t notice until it was too late. One thin arm wrapped around his chest with an alarming amount of strength, the other shoving a towel over his mouth. He stumbled backward a few steps, tried to take a swing at her, and noticed how drunk and heavy his movements were.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” she cooed in his ear as she let him fall to the ground. “You’ll see him soon.”

••••




“So this is your kidney.” She told him with a grin, holding the mass in front of Patrick as it dripped blood on his face. He tried to avoid getting it in his mouth as he gave a jarring cough that sent waves of pain through his body. She reached over him to place the kidney in a shining silver bowl. The bowl, which he had been informed also held his gall bladder and appendix, was close enough that Patrick could smell the blood.

If he wasn’t so worried it’d end up inside his body, he’d throw up.

Before she could return to her work, Patrick reached a hand out to push feebly against hers, not sure he could handle any more of this. She gave him a sweet, gentle, very out of place smile as she swiftly brought the bloody scalpel to his throat. Her other hand fisted in his hair to hold him still.

“You do not want my hand to slip, honey. Trust me. This sort of thing can get very messy if I’m not careful. You move my hand one inch in the wrong direction, and you’ll bleed. Quite a lot, I’m afraid, so many important things so close together. You’d die on this table. And while that’d be unfortunate for me, the consequences for you and your friends would be significantly worse. You can’t play hero for them when you’re six feet under.” The dry sob Patrick let out felt like it ripped his chest in half.

“Let me go,” he begged.

“Wonderful idea, really. Unfortunately, now’s a bad time. My floors are so clean, and you’re wide open. The blood would go everywhere, I’d have to get someone to run a mop through here again, neither of us want that.”

“Stop. Please,” Patrick wheezed, “please stop.”

“Stop what? Stop this?” She asked as she returned the scalpel to his abdomen, making quick work of her next target. It couldn’t have taken her much longer than a minute, but Patrick would’ve begged to differ. The ice in his stomach and the tears cutting tracks through the dried blood on his face would’ve begged to differ. The bone-deep agony burning him up like a forest in drought would’ve begged to differ. I imagine the scream torn from his throat, the one that lasted far longer than the operation, would’ve begged to differ as well if it had left him with any voice. His spine arched painfully off the gurney and he squeezed his eyes closed so hard he saw spots.

He would’ve sworn to you it was hours before she spoke to him again.

“Stop complaining, love, it’s just your spleen.”

••••




Pete watched in stoic silence as the bird came back from its journey, touching down on some powerlines across the street. Soon, Andy and Joe would join him, and together, they’d save Patrick and the case.

Though honestly, Pete could care less about his vow now. His best friend was down a hand and in the hands of the enemy because of that stupid thing. Pete just wanted Patrick back. If they save the world, awesome. All he cared about right now was the 5’5 idiot in glasses who he sent into the jaws of the beast on his own. “We’ll find you, buddy,” Pete murmured under his breath. “We’ll find you. Hold on.”

The self-hatred was trying to manifest again. He hoped his friends hurried, because he wouldn’t be able to fight it much longer on his own. What was he supposed to say to the voice in the back of his head? It was right. This was his fault. Patrick was in hell and all he could do was stand on a roof and hope there was a way out of it. It was Pete who handcuffed Patrick to the case. Pete who made Patrick take the responsibility because he was too much of a flight risk to take it himself.

Pete knew he wasn’t a good person. But Patrick, Patrick was the best person he ever met. Sometimes Pete looked at him and still didn’t believe he was real. That kid was too good for this world, far too good for Pete, and none of this was his fault. If someone had to get caught, picked up and taken apart for the sake of the mission, it shouldn’t have been Patrick. It should’ve been him. Pete was already a mess, scrambled up eggs in the head and liable to make the wrong decision every time it mattered. He doubted they could screw him up any more than he already was. In all honesty, Pete had been waiting for the universe to pay him back for all the wrong he’d done. It would’ve been poetic in a way.

But the universe didn’t owe Patrick a beating. Every move Patrick made was to help someone, to make the world a better place. And fuck it, Patrick deserved better than to die alone and afraid and abandoned by the people who promised to protect him.

Pete’s thoughts were all over the map, but one place they certainly were not was with the one-night-stand he had dismissed earlier. Perhaps they should’ve been. Because Pete was going to have a hard time avenging his best friend after the same woman, now dressed all in black, plunged a syringe into his neck.

“Sorry,” he muttered to himself as he felt control seeping out of his body. He lay limp in her arms, and he could only force out two more words before surrendering to the undertow. “…m’sorry, Trick.”

••••




“Pete!” Patrick screamed with the last hope he held in his chest. He knew Pete was the only chance he had left. If these bitches didn’t already have him, that was. Pete would gather the Defenders, Pete would call Code Phoenix, Pete would act. Pete would do something, even if it was the wrong something, because that’s who he was. Patrick didn’t need him to do the right thing. He just needed Pete to find him before it was too late. He had the sinking feeling ‘too late’ was a condition very close to coming true. “Help, fuck, I need your help, Pete. Please.” The other woman held him down by the throat as Mismatch leveled him with a look.

A strange look. She finally had that shred of humanity in her eyes that Patrick had been searching for for hours now. He had convinced himself she really was all machine, but here it was. Lips slightly parted, brows furrowed, she looked almost afraid of him. Patrick wanted to take advantage of that human side, wanted to force it to control her, but it was gone before he could even open his mouth. All that was left was a slight tremor as she bit out a reply. “You know he can’t hear you, right?”

“He shouldn’t be going through delirium yet,” the other told her. “It hasn’t been long enough, he’d probably need at least another twenty minutes or some serious blood loss.” Twenty minutes… no. He couldn’t.

“No, no more.” The cough set his body on fire. “I can’t.” Mismatch latched onto the plea and used it to push down whatever weakness had surfaced moments earlier.

“C’mon,” she pouted. “You can’t be giving up already. Fearless leader, right? You’re supposed to spur the troops on to victory, aren’t you? That’s why they gave it to you. That’s why they _trusted_ you. Patrick Stump, champion of the downtrodden, chosen savior of the noise.”

“Silence the noise,” the other one muttered under her breath.

“Silence the noise,” the first replied. “You’re supposed to fight us. This is really all you got?”

“So you’re telling me the others won’t even last this long?” Her partner asked. A semi-truck would’ve hit Patrick with less force than the panic did when they mentioned his bandmates. What they had done to him was one thing, but he imagined Joe with blood matting down his hair, Andy losing the hands he needed to pound out his beats on the drums, Pete broken and bleeding and missing a pile of organs… It couldn’t happen to them, too.

“No, don’t. Don’t do this to them. They’re innocent. Please, please leave them alone.” Mismatch rolled her eyes at him.

“You’re slow on the uptake, sweetheart. They’re just as guilty as you are. Innocent is the hundreds of thousands of young minds you have stolen and corrupted. That’s what _you_ did. All four of you. And you have to pay.” The other gave a wicked grin.

“If you want mercy for your friends, you can’t give up yet.” Patrick took a shuddering breath, ignoring the way it burnt his lungs. He had failed the mission. Miserably. That much was obvious. He couldn’t protect the case, he couldn’t protect himself, but there was still a fragile hope that the same couldn’t be said for his friends. Maybe he could still protect them.

“Okay,” he rasped. “Okay, fine.” Mismatch leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“The cooperation is sweet, hun, but you must know nothing you do or say will make this stop.” She straightened back up and reached for her blade. “Now hold still. I need a lung next and I imagine you’d like to go on breathing in the conventional way.”

••••




Hours later, Patrick would wake up far away from the hell he passed out in. Alone and sewn up, he was shocked and confused to note the absence of the pain that had become his constant companion. He took down deep lungfuls of the sweet air, expecting that would trigger the familiar sear, but still felt nothing. Organs back under his skin where they were supposed to be and mouth free of the stale blood flavor, Patrick couldn’t bring himself to worry about the new state of affairs. He snapped his bloody fingers. How bad could this really be?


	2. Young Volcanoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She felt bad for what she had done. And that, that was not something she was used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Tags have been updated)

The rage came off the older woman in waves, visible even in the pitch darkness that surrounded them. Something quieter, too. Disappointment. No anger in that. Just sadness.

“I didn’t put you at the head of this operation for your moral compass, child.” The younger woman grimaced.

“You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t need to be. You did. You were to acquire the target, remove the briefcase, get what you need, and wash your hands of it. Are you telling me these simple instructions are too challenging for you to follow?”

“No. I did it. I did what you commanded.”

“If you had done what I commanded, you would not be here lamenting the unscrupulous nature of your responsibilities.”

“I’m not... I’m not. I’m just asking: are you sure this is the only way?”

“Your job is not to question your orders.”

“Miss, with all due respect, you didn’t see him. You didn’t hear him.”

“You’ve done the same thing countless times. Don’t tell me the sight of blood now frightens you.” The younger sighed.

“It doesn’t. It never has. But this one was different.” She held up her hand. “And I know, I know what you’re going to say. You don’t need to tell me what he’s done or remind me why we’re doing this, I’m aware. I know that he’s at fault, that they all are, and that this is bigger than me and my childish whims. But you trust my instincts, don’t you?”

“Up until now, I did.”

“There’s something off about this mission. It didn’t feel right. His screams didn’t taste guilty. His eyes had the wrong pleas in them. The way he begged for his friends to rescue him… I didn’t feel the usual vindication. We may have made an error in our judgment of him. Of all of them.”

“You are our best soldier. You have done worse things to better people than this treacherous wretch. You have spent half your life carrying out operations no more difficult than this one. You dismantle people for a living, for God’s sake. Why is this one breaking you?”

“It’s not breaking me.”

“Most of you have one of these pitiful right-and-wrong crises at one point or another. Truly, girl, I thought you were better than this.” She bowed her head in shame.

“I’m sorry. I just… I wanted to help him. I’ve never had this problem before. What if it means something?”

“It means he’s every inch as manipulative as I warned you he was, and you’re falling into his trap. Pull yourself together, or I will put someone less vulnerable in command.”

“But what if _you’re_ wrong about this one?” The elder’s hand came down sharp and hard across her face, and she did her best not to let the gasp past her lips.

“Care to repeat that?” She wiped the blood from her mouth and soldiered on. It had to be said.

“What if we’re crippling, traumatizing, and bleeding out an innocent man?”

“Where are these words coming from? Crippling, traumatizing, how soft has he made you? This is a job, a mission, and nothing more. Stop speaking to him. Stop thinking about him. It is not up to you to contemplate your moral obligation to a guilty man.”

“But what if he doesn’t make it?” The other opened her mouth to respond, but she was not done. “And it’s not just him, either. The others are rattled as well. The curly-haired one still hasn’t opened his eyes. The one with the beard injured himself falling into the van, and they aren’t sure if he’ll be able to stand. And Peter—”

“Do not use the names, child.” The other bit out.

“…The one he kept calling for, he fought so hard we thought he’d scream himself into an aneurism. Do you think it will get better when he discovers what we did to his friend? It’s bad. This mission is destined for failure.”

“The plan is foolproof, and the judgment is not yours to make. You overestimate your position. You are a soldier, and while you have value to me, you are nothing that cannot be replicated with the right subject.”

“I know, but—” the elder’s eyes flashed something vicious, and the other took an unconscious step back.

“Either you’re scared, or you believe him an equal. I don’t believe you’re scared.”

“It isn’t like that—”

“They are not like you and I. Every decision they make, every inch of their lives is infested with emotion. If you honestly think parallels can be drawn between yourself and those disgusting creatures, perhaps you are unfit for this project. You’re better than this.”

“I can handle it.”

“Are you sure? Because every word you have uttered to me has pointed towards a gross inability to do what’s asked of you.” She grit her teeth against the doubt creeping in.

“This is my mission. I will not fail you. But what good will they be to us if they’re dead?”

“They’re kids. Kids bounce back.” The younger sighed as her superior walked away. “Oh, and Alpha?” She prompted without turning around.

“Yes, Miss?” She asked miserably.

“This insubordination is disgusting and unbecoming of you. The next time I see you, I expect it to be gone.” As the other disappeared from her sight, Alpha numbly ran a hand through her hair, wondering if it was too late to say no, or if it had every truly been a question.

••••




Pete Wentz was pissed.

Pete Wentz was pissed and his neck fucking _hurt_ and he still couldn’t feel his fingers and he’d love to say he hadn’t signed up for this shit but dammit, he had. He had been told the possible consequences and of course he hadn’t listened because Patrick was supposed to be the responsible one while Pete was off screwing his life up in some new and interesting way.

Pete was used to putting things on Patrick. Patrick was the one who knew what the right decision was, Patrick was the one who they all depended on, Patrick was the reason the band hadn’t tanked and disappeared on at least three different occasions. And he was kicking himself because this was another example of him selfishly, obtusely putting it all on Patrick and now his best friend was missing a hand and God only knows what else.

The self-hatred was grinding in his bones again, and when it got this bad, there was only one person who could banish that angry, bitter, hissing voice. That person was a bit… tied up at the moment and Pete knew his stupid self-sabotaging tendencies weren’t going to help anyone but he didn’t know how to get rid of them on his own. Patrick was always the one who fixed him. Patrick needed him now. He needed all of them.

Yeah, Patrick needed them, but fat fucking lot of help they’d be right now, trapped in an elevator, eyes blinded and arms bound.

“Let us the fuck go!” Pete shouted for what must’ve been the twentieth time, at least.

“You have a remarkably limited vocabulary,” one of the crazy bitches told him. Pete ground his teeth together, flexed his wrists until he felt the dull ache between his skin and the rope, and let out a growling noise he hardly recognized as his own.

“You have no idea who the fuck you’re messing with!”

“I have a very good idea who the fuck I’m messing with, and I’m not concerned. You, on the other hand, should be.” He felt the hatred light up tension in his shoulders, as if his body was coiling in preparation for an attack.

Which, really, the chances of Pete mounting offense here were less than none. He knew that, but between the desperate need to get out of wherever they were going and the clawing want to find his fallen friend, complacency was not in the cards.

“Where’s Patrick?” Joe slurred for the third time. Pete felt for him. Whatever they had done to get Joe here, it had worked a bit too long and the man was floating in and out of consciousness. He had heard the thunk of Joe’s head against something hard and startled cursing from one of the women when they were unloading them from the van, and if Pete had an ounce of worry to spare that wasn’t already directed at Patrick, he’d give it to Joe.

“Not dead,” she replied flatly, as she had every time before. This time, Pete felt the need to add on to the dead question.

“Not dead isn’t fucking good enough. _Where_ is he?” Just then, the elevator door opened, and a hard shove sent Pete careening into the wall beyond them.

“You three are even more irritating than I expected.” Beyond Pete’s blindfold, one woman held up a limping Andy while another directed a disoriented Joe away from the wall he was about to smack into.

“Are the others mute, or just scared of us?” Pete asked, searching for a reaction, knowing there had to be more than just the one taunting him and getting more and more unsettled by their silence. A shot to the small of his back with something hard sent him to his knees, gasping. The woman who hit him seem unperturbed as she dragged him back to his feet.

“They keep their silence because they know their place, unlike you.” Pete’s fists clenched behind him as she pushed him forward again and he reluctantly started moving towards whatever horrible fate awaited him.

Hopefully, towards Patrick. None of the rest mattered much to him.

A muffled crack of bone against plaster rang down the hall as Andy quietly muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

“We can’t fucking see,” Pete growled at her _._

“That’s the point.”

“It’s fucking stupid. It doesn’t matter if we know where we are or where we’re going, you’re obviously not letting us out of your sight.” The woman laughed. Fucking laughed at him.

“Seems we have a talker here. No matter. One thing that never survives this place is a mouth like yours.”

“Let. Us. Go.”

“Seems a bit counterproductive, doesn’t it? Besides, it’d be pretty selfish of you to willingly leave your friend in our care. You seem the foolishly hopeful type. Don’t you believe you can save him if you just _want_ _it_ bad enough?” She mocked. Pete stopped moving altogether as ice shards pierced his chest. He tried to turn the self-hatred into anger, to direct it outwards instead of letting it cut away pieces of him. The handcuffs were his idea, yes, but these women did the rest. The very one speaking to him now might have done any number of horrible things to his favorite person.

“Don’t fucking touch him!” Pete shouted, the demand sounding more like a plea as it echoed back at him.

“It’s a little too late for that. Go.” He stood his ground as the cold metal of the object that had struck him before slid underneath his chin. “Did that sound like a request?” She brought the blunt end of it back into his windpipe, igniting a fresh mess of pain in his throat as he choked and wheezed. The burn was so distracting that he didn’t have the wherewithal to resist when she urged him forward again. “Stay away from him,” she repeated with an ugly sneer in her voice. “How sweet. You got the hand, didn’t you? You must know his blood’s already on our hands.”

“Hand?” Joe mumbled drunkenly.

“What hand?” Andy asked.

“Yeah Pete, what hand?” The woman asked. Pete swallowed hard. He didn’t... he didn’t want his friends to find out like this, he didn’t want to say it out loud, he sure as shit didn’t want to do anything this bitch told him to do, but they deserved to know.

“Phoenix,” he rasped, windpipe still raw. “Called Phoenix cause I got Patrick’s hand on m’doorstep. These bitches crippled him,” he spat, blood running down his chin. Pete could feel the weight of the words in the air, and tried his best not to think on them too much. Joe and Andy knew they were complicit in Patrick’s fate, the same way he was. They let him take the danger on himself. Joe had told him verbatim that no one would cut his hand off. They were each responsible in their own way. They were awful words that brought awful thoughts, but Pete said them, and let them stay said.

“Want me to tell you how I did it?” Pete’s blood boiled. _It was **her.**_

“You fucking bitch,” he hissed at her.

“Want me to tell you what else I did to him?” His face got hot. He wanted to _kill_ this woman, but what could he do? Get hit with the metal thing a few more times? Was that going to help Patrick? “No? Too bad. It’s a good story. You should’ve heard the way he screamed. Your _name_ was a popular topic.”

They traveled the rest of the way in silence. Soon, the three men were pushed into a room to their right. It could’ve had any number of horrors in it, Pete’s imagination running wild with the possibilities. What he wasn’t expecting, however, was Patrick. Patrick in more than one piece, Patrick far from the man he was when he left to deliver the case, but Patrick nonetheless.

Delusional, loopy, drugged up Patrick, who smiled happily at his friends as they came in, blissfully unaware of the very real and very constant danger he was in. The remaining members of Fall Out Boy were brought to the grand table Patrick was sitting at, screaming protests as they were tied down to their chairs, sweat shining on their faces under the chandelier. The women reached for the pick lines running from the blue IV bag hanging above the table, and while Pete and Joe weren’t thrilled about having needles shoved into their arms, Andy was livid. As soon as he felt the scrape of cold metal against his arm, he jerked away, desperate to get out of his binds.

“You are not putting any fucking drugs in me!” He shouted at them, trying to filter panic into rage as he pushed himself back as far as he could.

“Cute,” the one who had been arguing with Pete remarked as hands converged on him, two holding his head back, two more pinning his wrists to the arms of the chair. His heart pumped in his ears as he tried to fight them off, knowing damn well there was no way out of this.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t let them take this from him.

“Stop,” he gasped. “Please, I don’t want it.” One of the women held her finger to his lips as another slid the needle deep into his vein.

“Shh. You’ll like it.”

“I won’t,” he whimpered as he felt it flow into his blood stream, numbing and calm and everything Andy didn’t fucking want. Bone-deep contentedness and safety settled in his body and it was wrong, it was so wrong, his mind let out one last _no_ before it was dragged into the undertow.

After Andy’s mind unwillingly surrendered to the drug running through his body, a hush fell over the room. The women who held Andy down looked at him warily.

“Keep an eye on that one,” the leader told her underlings as she stalked back towards the table. She rested a hand against the wood as she watched the other three men for any sign the drug wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. The snake that had been traversing the length of the table wrapped itself around her wrist, and she gave him a rare smile, remembering back to a simpler time when she had been able to keep the animal as a pet instead of a weapon. She moved him over to a bowl of apples and shooed him off her arm. “You have to stay put, Switch,” she muttered to him. “We need you.”

Patrick watched the exchange with unbridled wonder. Since leaving the place where he’d lost half a dozen body parts, he seemed to find everything not covered in blood and guts to be a treasure. It certainly helped that he couldn’t get his brain to string thoughts together in a linear way and had given up trying quite a while ago. Accepting everything as harmless and enrapturing was a lot easier than trying to come up with reasons why it wasn’t.

So it didn’t really make a difference to him whether that was blood or wine being poured into his mouth. He could hardly taste it, anyway, and his mind was a long way off from any of the sensations his body was feeling. He was too busy trying to remember if there was a difference in the flavor of wine versus blood. None of his friends seemed to mind, so he doubted it was worth worrying himself over.

He’d have to ask Pete later how to tell the two liquids apart. Pete always knew about those kinds of things. Patrick laughed quietly to himself. Pete would probably roll his eyes and tell him how obvious the answer was. Jackass thought he knew everything.

The woman holding his drink laughed with him. He wondered if she knew the answer, too. The air in the room was getting thicker and sweeter and it made Patrick’s head light as he looked lethargically left and right for the source. It ended up being soft white billows of smoke drifting from Andy’s lips across the table. Pete and Joe soon joined in, but the sight of Andy made Patrick’s brows furrow. He couldn’t remember why, but there was something wrong with that picture.

Discerning wrong things was far too much work for Patrick’s drug-addled and pain-fried mind, so he put it away in the box with the blood wine. Questions he could ask later, when this cotton had dislodged itself from his brain. Instead, he leaned forward and took a drag off the hookah for himself. He didn’t really know what he was doing, but that was nothing new. A cold burn burrowed in his lungs, which felt suspiciously shallower than he remembered. He tried not to cough as he let the smoke escape his lips, not wanting the truth of his inexperience with this brand of sin to show through.

He didn’t mind it, the dull singe that ran through his chest. It felt familiar.

Familiar because pain had become a familiar thing, right? A friendly old habit inhabiting the folds of his ribs. It was almost unsettling to be without it. The conscious bits he had left tried to pull the memory together, white blinding pain cutting through bones, mismatched eyes, air in the wrong places, and then darkness. He gave an involuntary shudder, not even sure if the memory was his own, but wanting nothing to do with it.

Patrick gave in because the illusion of a choice made him feel free. _This is a prison,_ something in his head tried to remind him. He took another swig of the red to clear the voice out. When the next thing that came around was a tray of colorful powders, Patrick didn’t even try to hide his eagerness. He was finding that the more things he indulged in, the quieter the voice got and the weaker the flood of memory became. He didn’t need that, didn’t need the reminders and the echoes. The chance to make it stop was more than welcome.

“Pick your poison,” a voice with a shadow of familiarity told him. He blinked owlishly at the plate. He knew it could mean a hundred different bad things.

He couldn’t bring himself to care.

“’rnge,” he slurred. She pointed to the orange pile and looked deep into his eyes. He didn’t like that, didn’t like the way it made him feel. Like she could see him better than he could see himself. He looked slightly off to her right as he nodded. _Pete’s wearing a blindfold_ , he observed as a straw was pushed into his nose. Maybe there was nothing wrong there. Pete had always been into things that didn’t fall into the parameters of “normal”. Cogent thoughts became a thing of the past as they blocked his other nostril and he took the powder into his body. He coughed a bit, knowing he lacked the power to actually expel the substance.

Then the warm feeling exploded in his chest. Happiness bubbled through him as his world was set aglow with soft, yellow light. Happiness like missing prom to play a basement show, like seeing Joe and Andy for the first time after the hiatus, happiness like kissing Pete before realizing what that meant. It was comfortable, familiar, much in the same way that the pain was. A warm blanket between him and the horrors of the past.

“Tha’s good.” The woman smiled approvingly at his blissed-out expression. She was more than a little surprised at how well her prisoner was moving, considering everything that had been done to him only a few short hours ago. She knew he wasn’t impervious to pain. She herself had proved that. **_You_** _did that to him,_ she reminded herself. Miss would laugh at her. Now is when she falls victim to ethics.

It didn’t matter.

She moved to Patrick’s right, towards the insolent worm that she dearly hoped could still feel the impression of her pipe in his throat despite the drug running through his veins. Conscience or not, that man was an annoying insurgent and she felt no guilt for the bruises she had beaten into his body. One man was enough of a weakness. She wasn’t about to feel bad for him too.

Bass player, the mission report had said. _Peter_ , her mind needlessly recalled. **Do not use the names** **.** She remembered the way anger had drowned this man, the guilt that would swing under his empty threats. She chose a light blue shade for him, counting on its ability to erase whatever emotions still lay dormant in his rebel blood. One of her inferiors came around the other side of the man to hold his mouth and one of his nostrils shut. “Breathe in for me, baby,” she purred, forcing the sweetness into her voice that she knew encouraged submission from an impressionable mind.

To her mild surprise, he did as she asked of him. It wasn’t long before he was clearly submerged into the cool tranquility of the strand he had been given. She’d seen the effects before. His world behind the blindfold would be overtaken with a dark cloud, opening up and pouring down the kind of rain that frivolous, impractical people liked to get caught in. Not quite cold, but it’d take the warmth out of him to the point that the feel, sound, and smell of the room would fall into a state of incredible calm and impossible peace.

It was better than he deserved, but she also knew karma would come for this irritating man and his friends soon enough.

She went to the curly-haired one next, knowing the heavy grogginess he had experienced in the elevator probably felt normal to him by now. “Guitar player,” she muttered over the voice that felt the need to butt in with _his name is Joe._ **Do not use the names.** Muted yellow was the color that entered the man’s lungs a moment after. His system accepted the change and quickly adapted.

She could see it in the way his posture straightened, that the drug was taking effect. Confidence. The foolish man thought he could take on the world. There was a wonderful paradox taking place in his head, she knew. He believed he could’ve made it out of his binds and taken his friends to freedom, but he no longer had any desire to leave. The soft yellow hue would creep into previously black vision, trapping him in an infinite loop of endless motivation and nothing to do with it. Courage and complacency. A perfect combination.

Her shoulders tensed as she made her way to her final target, doing her best not to focus on the man himself. She knew from the briefing, he had _principles,_ this one. Didn’t like things in his body. Wouldn’t like any of this one bit. _Keep subdued. Strong of body and mind._ A pain in the ass, in other words.

And he was. It took four of them to hold him down, a fifth to keep his mouth and nose shut, and he still fought them. It was a clumsy struggle, his reactions dulled by the poisons already pulsing under his skin, but yet his mind chose to waste his energy on trivial things like wants and desires. He held out for a long time, clearly intent on making himself pass out. Not in the mood to wait for that, she clutched her hand around his throat until he was forced to let the air out. The next reluctant breath brought bright red in with it.

“Dammit,” the man rasped as she released him, pointlessly trying to cough it out.

“We’re inevitable, sweetheart. Don’t bother,” she told him, watching carefully for the point where the worries would fall away against a wall of euphoria. It happened like a tidal wave cascading over his features. His brain abandoned its vaunted values in exchange for something far easier to swallow. Irrational and out-of-place exuberance. Anguish would be overrun by elation much in the same way that the black of the blindfold would fade to bloody scarlet.

They were much easier to manage after that.

She thanked whatever gods existed for it, too, because these men were among the most irritatingly resistant of all the prisoners she’d seen.

Her subordinates picked trays of food up from the table as she held an apple in front of the leader’s face. She let out a grateful breath when his teeth broke the skin, pleased that they wouldn’t have to fight them every inch any longer. His eyes followed Switch as if in a trance as the snake slithered off the table and onto his leg. She reached a hand out to guide her former pet away from their mutual enemy when things went to hell, as things have a tendency to do. The warm orange glow around Patrick’s world had short-circuited, and reality came hurtling back to him as his piercing scream made the woman next to him jump in surprise.

Everything was coming into focus for Patrick far too quickly. The pain was coming back to him like a promise in the same way it had left. He screamed hoarsely again as his neck snapped back against his chair. He knew it was too good to last, the things done to his body weren’t the kinds of horrors likely to leave him anytime soon. But he hadn’t cared when the agony had finally gone, had disregarded the way it had whispered _‘I’ll be back’,_ because his body was pain-free and nothing else could possibly matter. But pain kept its promises, and didn’t even have the decency to warn him before coming back with an ugly vengeance.

Hysterically, his mind begged for the drugs to come back. Patrick didn’t dare let the desire leave his throat, knowing you didn’t ask people like this for anything without it coming back to haunt you. But he didn’t want to be so aware of his own suffering. It was too much, and his vision doubled as he tried to focus on the wide-eyed stares he was receiving.

“Why is he awake?” One of them growled, mismatched eyes lighting up in confusion and half a sliver of fear.

Patrick remembered her, didn’t think he’d forget her voice for the rest of his life. He was grateful for a brief second that he couldn’t get his brain to concentrate on any one thing, because it stopped the raging storm of memory that wanted to assault him.

“I don’t know!” Another one replied to her. Patrick tried to get a solid grip on his reality before he lost it again, hearing his shouts and shrieks of pain without really feeling the sounds leave his body.

“Shh, Trick.” Pete muttered at him. Pete. Pete?! Oh no, no, no.

“Pete!” Patrick screamed back at him, desperate, horrified. “Wake up! Pete!”

“Shh,” his friend repeated.

“Pete, listen to me!” Patrick begged. “You have to get out of here! You don’t know what they do!” Pete drunkenly shook his head.

“Nuh uh,” he slurred. “I’m fi-i-ine.”

“Pete, no.” Patrick’s voice broke on the name. “You don’t… you don’t understand what they’ll do to you.” Every word hurt, felt like knives in his lungs, but he had to make Pete understand before it was too late. “You can’t save me, you have to get out now! Get Andy and Joe… and get your ass out of here, you stubborn dipshit!” Matches down his throat, acid in his chest, talking was a unique kind of agony, but it didn’t hurt as much as looking at Pete did.

Patrick had always looked to Pete for direction, since he was 18 years old and hiding behind a drum set. Pete had been his hero, his brother, his guiding light for as long as he could remember. And now he was tied to a chair, blindfolded, and clearly drugged out of his mind. It ripped Patrick’s heart to terrified shreds. He knew none of them stood a chance to get out of here alive if Pete couldn’t help. He also knew he didn’t particularly want to live in a world without Pete Wentz.

Patrick couldn’t bear to look at him any longer, and instead tried to find a way out. A knife, a loose rope, they had to have made a mistake. Everything was blurry and the sounds of his own shallow, wheezing breaths were very distracting. Instead of finding anything that could help him, he found the snake in his lap. Instantly, a debilitating pinch pulled him inside his mind.

The present images started to blend with something else. With the hell he left behind, the one with the bright lights and the blood and the meat cleaver. The image of Mismatch and her friend over him flashed wildly behind his eyes, the shine of their knives, the taste of his own blood, the sharp smell of rubbing alcohol that burned in his nose, the fear that seized up his chest. He struggled desperately, needing to get back to the slightly less hellish room he was supposed to be in. The two blurred together, pieces fitting themselves together in an order that was broken and wrong.

“What do we do?”

_“No one can hear you where you are.”_

“This isn’t supposed to be happening!”

_“Want me to tell you which organs you can live without?”_

“Well, give him something!”

_“Stop complaining, love, it’s just your spleen.”_

In the time he’d been there, Patrick had never seen a shred of uncertainty from the women who held him prisoner. The panic in their voices, what he could hear of it anyway, sent chills down his spine. Because if there was something these fearless monsters were frightened of, well, Patrick should be terrified of it.

_“Patrick Stump, champion of the downtrodden, chosen savior of the noise.”_

The lapses between present and past were given him whiplash and he needed it to end. Didn’t even care if it ended with him back on the operating table, so long as it stopped spinning.

_“Hold still. I need a lung next.”_

His leg jolted involuntarily with the last statement, and the snake was sent flying off his lap. The flood of memory came screeching to a halt. Patrick would’ve loved to have a moment to contemplate if he had finally gone insane or if they had a snake with **mind control powers,** but he was a little too busy with all the other terrible things still happening.

Because it wasn’t as if this place was so much better than the scene in his head, not when they were hooking up a second tube to the inside of his good arm and pumping him full of God-knows-what. A sudden panic gripped him. He didn’t want to go back to whatever that was before. He didn’t want to let go of the little control he still had in favor of some helpless vegetative state. He knew what they were capable of. If he couldn’t stop it, at the very least, he wanted to know what was happening to his mind and his body. The drug was already making his tongue feel thick in his mouth, the weight of the narcotic pressing on his brain, making everything heavy.

“No,” he muttered weakly. “Please, don’t.”

“Come on,” Mismatch snarled at him, too busy with whatever crap they were injecting him with to look him in the eye. Or maybe she couldn’t look at him. Maybe she felt guilty. He still had a lot to figure out with her, but he doubted guilty was the right word. More like ‘slightly inconvenienced by human feelings’. “We’re just shooting the sunshine into your veins, Patrick. Haven’t you done that yourself?”

He bristled at the reference. It felt like a horrible violation that they knew his music and hated him anyway. His skin crawled with the idea of them sitting down to pick apart a Fall Out Boy record, listening to his own voice as they plotted ways to destroy him.

“You’re insane,” he choked out as the last bit of his rational mind slipped away.

“You’re right,” she hissed back at him.

“I really expected that the bass guy was going to be the difficult one, or even the drummer, according to the briefing.” One of the others groused. “Thought his procedure would’ve been enough to shut him up. Guess he’s a bit more stubborn than we expected.”

“They all break in the end,” Mismatch responded distractedly.

“How much more do you think it’ll take?”

“Doesn’t matter. He can’t last forever.” Something distant and disconnected in Patrick’s brain said he should be afraid of the words being spoken and the fact they’re speaking about him, but pain and reason were pushed into the same corner of his consciousness and it didn’t matter. He didn’t feel hurt, so he couldn’t be hurt, and how important could the rest of it really be?

“I think we’re in the clear,” one of the women stated cautiously, giving Patrick a small grin. He smiled back at her. She seemed pleased by that, which made him feel good. It seemed a long time since he smiled. It made him feel lighter, somehow.

“I want to be sure,” the more familiar woman told the others, disappearing behind him. When she returned, she had a large plate full of brightly colored piles of powder. It tugged at that corner where all the bad things were piled up. Patrick ignored it, because he remembered that something about that plate felt good. The woman placed a straw over a pile that was pale pink in color.

“What’s that one do?” Someone behind him asked.

“I dunno,” another woman replied.

“Bottoms up,” the familiar woman with the purple and green eyes told him. When he hesitated, those eyes lit up little sparks of annoyance. “You know how this works, get on with it.” Patrick focused on the comfortable feeling he recalled as he took a deep breath and snorted the powder up through the straw. It felt like breathing in sharp granules of sand, but the pain existed only as a whisper that quickly faded with the next breath. He didn’t feel much of a change, a rosier hue to the room, but nothing worthy of the trepidation that had showed on their faces when she went for the plate.

“You’re safe here,” the woman told him. Patrick nodded. That made sense. He trusted her. Seeming satisfied, the women left his side and leaned over the table to pick up plates of food. It was quiet for a few minutes as the woman fed him and his friends at the table. Patrick decided then that he didn’t like the way quiet felt anymore. All he heard was the creaking of his bones and the shallow pant of his breathing. He didn’t remember his body being so damn loud before.

Patrick was content to quietly loathe the silence that surrounded him when a soft light was cast on the room, warming something in his heart he didn’t realize was frozen. He wished he could stand. Stretch his legs, touch his friends, make sure this bone creakiness didn’t have any bearing on his ability to move. Not long after that notion ran through him, Patrick felt the ropes holding him loosen and fall to the floor. He shrugged his shoulders and reached for a napkin. It was nice and all, to be free, he was grateful, but he wasn’t worried before. That woman said he was safe here. He was sure he would’ve been let go eventually.

His friends were also liberated from their binds, and they slid their blindfolds up to their foreheads with a slightly perplexed look on their faces. Then Pete grinned, stood, and gulped down half the pitcher of red. He spat the last bit halfway across the room with a goofy look on his face that Patrick couldn’t quite place. Joe took the jug from Pete and downed the rest of it, the same odd expression gracing his features. Strangest of all was that Andy had the look too, even though the ugly corner of Patrick’s brain told him Andy hated everything in the room. The drinking, the smoking, the drugs, whatever meat was on the table. But it couldn’t be a problem, because the people here would never force Andy to do anything he didn’t want to do.

That’s what the look was. Freedom. Patrick had forgotten what that looked like.

Joe crashed two plates together like cymbals and laughed like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard. Patrick felt lighter with the sound. He’d always loved Joe’s laugh, and the way it took the hurt out of any instant it existed in. Patrick wondered how he could’ve ever thought this place dangerous. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his friends so happy and carefree.

Being in a band that mattered, a band that could affect change and make a difference, was a lot of responsibility and pressure, and the four of them often struggled with letting loose and enjoying real life outside of music. (If asked, Patrick would tell you there is no real life outside of music. Pete would tell you that was why Patrick was so damn uptight.)

Patrick knew it hit Pete the hardest, his friend acted like he couldn’t care less, but it weighed heavy on him. He could never relax, not even when Fall Out Boy disbanded. Had to be doing something, starting up bars and clothing lines and TV shows and refusing to stay put for any amount of time. Poor guy probably hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since From Under The Cork Tree dropped. Patrick was so relieved to see him at peace with himself and everything around him. That was all he had ever wanted for Pete, for him to be able to enjoy his life without worrying. Without having to OD on Ativan again just to get there. He felt like he hadn’t seen the real Pete Wentz in years, yet here the real Pete was in front of him, the same no-strings-attached smile he wore back before Patrick even picked up a microphone. He felt indebted to these people for bringing this out of his friend when Patrick himself couldn’t even do it.

Pete, Joe, and Andy brought the freedom over to Patrick’s side of the table and helped him to his feet, crushing him between them when he found his balance. The hug was warm, and Patrick felt the world glow orange, like everything might be okay.

“I missed you guys,” Patrick murmured into someone’s chest. Joe’s, probably. It smelled like Joe.

“We missed you too,” Pete replied. “Y’alright, Trick?” He asked, turning oddly serious. Patrick gave him a crooked grin.

“Never better.”

Eventually, Joe and Andy got too antsy to stay in the same place any longer, and left them to dance with the girls, who had added bloody pig masks and subtracted shirts from their wardrobe. But Pete clung to Patrick like a lifeline. He just wanted to feel how soft Patrick’s hair still was despite the sweat and blood, wanted to smell the way he smelled until Pete actually grounded himself in the knowledge that his carelessness hadn’t killed his best friend. Patrick laughed, and the action didn’t seem to pain him at all.

“Chill out, dude. You’re stiff as a board. I’m real. I’m okay,” he whispered tightly in Pete’s ear as Pete’s head rested softly against his neck. _Just a few more seconds. I still feel like you’ll evaporate any moment and I’ll be left holding nothing more than a broken memory of you and a few puffs of hope drifting away into the air._ Pete clutched him closer to his body, grip strong enough that he could feel Patrick’s gentle heartbeat against his more frantic one.

“But you were gone,” Pete breathed. “You were gone, and it was my fault, and fuck. Fuck, I thought I lost you, Trick. I’m so sorry.”

“Shh,” Patrick muttered, the hand he still had running up and down Pete’s spine. “I’m okay, it’s okay.” Pete tried not to dwell on the fact that each breath his friend took was hitched and shallow.

“You’re not okay. Don’t lie to me.”

“It’s not important right now. I can’t even feel it.” He pulled Pete back a few steps until Patrick’s back was against the wall. “It’s just really good to see you. I need you, you know. You make me brave.” Pete saw a strange clarity in Patrick’s eyes, even though they were both doubtlessly a bit out of their right minds.

“You don’t have to be. Brave, I mean. You don’t have to be strong for us. You can lose it, we’d all understand.” Patrick rolled his eyes.

“Christ, Pete, could you shut your mouth with that angsty shit and just come here?” Pete stepped as close to him as he could without touching, wondering if Patrick could feel the way his pulse burned through his veins with every inch of space removed from between them.

“You know angsty shit is all I’m good—” then Pete was cut off because Patrick’s good arm was wrapped around his shoulders and his lips were gently brushing Pete’s. It was a tentative motion by nature, but Patrick did it like he had never been more sure of anything in his life. “Patrick,” Pete gasped in surprise when their lips parted.

“Peter, shut the fuck up,” he teased with a smile as he pulled Pete closer, fingers gently running through his hair. Patrick leaned in close and pressed his mouth to Pete’s, still maddeningly soft as if he was worried Pete was going to break. Like Pete was the one who had any good reason for being about to fall apart here. But this was different from the last time, all those years ago. Pete pushed down the image of Patrick’s crushed face the morning after when Pete had pretended it hadn’t happened, hadn’t ever spoken of it again.

He shook off the memory, because this time, Patrick wasn’t saying yes because he felt like he couldn’t say no. This time Patrick just tasted like Pete always thought he would, like seventy-degree weather and summer Saturdays and safety. He didn’t taste like trepidation, and Pete didn’t get the crushing feeling he was taking advantage of him. This time Pete felt ten pounds later instead of shouldering the weight of his stupid past decisions. He’d finally been allowed to drop that burden, after all these years. This time Patrick just tasted like Patrick, because he wanted Pete too.

He didn’t have to feel guilty. It didn’t feel like revenge for what Pete had done, even thought he always imagined that would be the motive if his lips ever collided with Patrick’s again. Pete’s brain wasn’t taking the opportunity to mock the decisions he had made, wasn’t knocking around in his head the way it always did, whispering fresh regrets and paranoia in his ears.

His head was quiet, his muscles relaxed, and the world was finally standing still. When Pete pulled Patrick closer to him, one arm around Patrick’s waist and the other softly resting on his cheek, Patrick didn’t feel like nervous sweat and pit-of-your-stomach wrongness.

It finally felt right. Felt like they were supposed to be there, they weren’t fighting against fate, they were letting life happen to them, free, unafraid. Somehow, after all the shit Pete had put him through, Patrick still wanted him, maybe even loved him. It was Patrick’s chapped singer’s lips on his and Patrick’s guitar-calloused hand on the back of his neck, Patrick with his constant rhythm, his never-ending beat. Pete could remember Patrick’s rhythm in the van that night, frantic, stuttering, the unsung notes all off-key. Pete had never seen Patrick act that way. It wasn’t him.

Pete had fantasized about this moment for years, played out every possible scenario in his head. What he would say, what he would do differently, how many apologies he would have to make. He imagined the paralyzing guilt that would come with admitting that night even happened. He imagined a thousand ways it could go wrong, ranging from best to worst-case scenarios. Pete told himself if he ever got the balls to do it, he would be ready for whatever happened.

But nothing could’ve prepared him for the real feeling of real Patrick, real Patrick who was making out with him like he was the only thing that mattered in this world. Real Patrick who wanted him, who didn’t need an apology, who didn’t want to talk about it, who wanted nothing but Pete.

It didn’t sound anything like the Patrick that Pete knew, but why would he complain about Patrick Stump being all over him? His lead singer had been the star of every wet dream, the on he had envisioned every time he slept with a chick who meant nothing to him. It was always Patrick. He’d do anything for that kid.

Patrick gasped into Pete’s mouth as Pete pinned him against the wall behind him, hands on his wrists and not even caring about the bloody stump just inches from his fingers. Patrick was Pete’s, Patrick’s skin under his fingertips, Patrick…

Wow, Patrick’s tongue was in his mouth, finding the spot behind Pete’s front teeth that made him shiver, and he’d be damned if he could get another coherent thought composed. Patrick was in Pete’s arms and he didn’t care about a damn thing. Patrick bit down on his bottom lip and he could feel the smirk on the kid’s face as he leaned in close and tugged on Pete’s earlobe with his teeth. Pete gave a soft whimper as Patrick breathed his name in his ear. “Pete.”

“What?”

“I love you.” Pete kissed the words off his lips and felt them breathe new life into him. The warmth burst in his chest and the lightness took root in his heart. Pete had heard those words from countless people in his life, but this was the only one he ever wanted. Patrick, that too-eager kid from Chicago not even out of high school who believed with every naïve inch of his body that Fall Out Boy would make it even though Pete told him daily that he was nothing but a dreamer. Patrick, who held Pete through every sleepless, tearful, angsty night, every breakup and every fuck up, who never even considered turning his back on Pete. Patrick, who could do anything he set his mind to and remained completely humble. Patrick, who was as close to perfect as anyone could ever hope to be. Patrick deserved so much better than Pete. But that Patrick loved Pete. And somehow, they lived in a world where Pete had the balls to say it back, to tell him the truth.

“I love you too. I’m so sorry.”

“Shut the fuck up and kiss me, moron.” _What a time for things to finally start going right,_ Pete thought as he melted back into Patrick’s body.

••••




It was what the Vixens wanted them to believe, and believe it they did. Hallucinogens are funny that way, taking your reality and spinning you a new one from a poisonous thread of deceit. There was no hope between those walls, not for our heroes. They left their hope in that briefcase, and this was what they were left with. A room full of drugs, blood, guts, and lies. Yet, perhaps it was better, to let them believe what they did. It’s hard to make a case for **wanting** to know you had been force-fed your friend’s organs. Difficult to think it the better idea to be aware of the fact you ate parts of your own body.

You’d choose to be ignorant of it too, wouldn’t you? You’d hope to never find out it had happened, right?

It may have been the first act of mercy. It would certainly be the last. As Alpha led her subordinates out of the room, Patrick snapped his fingers one last time, not knowing he may never get the blood off that hand. Blissfully unaware that even his horrified awakening from the trance he had been in would be paradise compared to what was to come.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rest of the chapters in this work are still in the preliminary stages of revision, so it might be a while before this is updated. *shameless self-plug* feel free to subscribe so you can be notified when my lazy ass gets back to this work :)


	3. Alone Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The time for false hope was over. No longer would our heroes be allowed to believe they were safe, happy, together, or whole. Things had perhaps never been worse than they were at that moment. Patrick’s attempted rescue team were now waking up in three separate rooms without the slightest bit of context as to where they were and why they were there. Away from each other, away from Patrick who was their only hope at understanding their situation, and away from any prayer of escape. On their own against an evil force more powerful than their minds could fathom. It was no longer just the briefcase in danger. Their very lives were at stake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Sorry it's been a minute since I've added to this story, inspiration wasn't very reliable and it's a long one. I know the chapters of this story are extremely long and they're only getting longer. I keep them together because I'm trying to stay organized from music video to music video. However, my first draft for MSKWYDITD is almost 25k words, which I know is a completely insane amount of words for a single chapter. Drop a comment and let me know if I should start splitting these up into more digestible parts  
> ~also~  
> Possible trigger warning: I talk about anxiety in a way that isn't very sensitive in this chapter (mostly in the context of self-loathing and minimizing the effects of it). This doesn't in any way reflect my personal opinion about anxiety, but I am using characters with mental illnesses who don't have a positive opinion of themselves, so that's where that's coming from. If you find negative views of mental illness triggering, this might not be the story for you.

Alpha did her best not to blink as she made her way through the dim hallway. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw his wretched face.

_Wretched? You mean confused, hurt, terrified?_

Those were the kinds of words Miss had taught her never to use. Humanizing words, she’d call them. Targets weren’t human. They were a means to an end. If the leader had it her way, names probably wouldn’t even make it to the mission briefing. Creatures didn’t have names, ghosts didn’t have families, and pain was a language even monsters could understand.

Actions were what mattered. Words hardly needed to be spoken at all. Yet she was haunted by his eyes, his voice, the way he was braver in pain than she was in conquest. She was used to destroying cowards, and it rarely took much to accomplish that. Even heroes usually held a soft, weak thing under walls of bravado.

And the man stunk of fear, but he was not a coward.

She hadn’t known there was a difference. How can a man be brave when he is afraid?

Her training, her programming, everything she’d ever been taught screamed that it didn’t matter, he didn’t matter, nothing mattered but the job. Her heart latched onto the way he pulled his broken pieces together to defend his friends. Broken things were supposed to stay broken. He was distracting. The way his secret bounced against her leg wasn’t helping.

She tried to find comfort in the familiar burn in her muscles as she carried the heavy case towards the exit. It was difficult though, when her victim’s blood still painted the silver a dark red and empty handcuffs sang a sinister song as they clicked against the handle. Not to mention the plastic bag, which she wasn’t even going to  **think** about.

Alpha quickened her pace after descending the stairs. The sooner this thing was out of her hands, the better. Normally she handled sensitive information with practiced ease, but no part of this operation adhered to her definition of normal.

She pasted a cocky smirk onto her face as she threw her shoulder into the door and emerged into the thick, muggy, August air. The dark cloak of the starless sky was a welcome change of pace from the bright lights that had been necessary for the dismantlement and dissection of a human being. The pitch-black limousine was waiting for her around back, and she slid the plastic bag and the briefcase through the window while being very careful to avoid eye contact.

“Mission Codename: RATATAT is in motion,” she reported.

“You’re late.”

“Jaye forgot the calling card at the—”

“I don’t care. Have you moved past your ethical dilemma?” She could feel the woman’s eyes boring into her as she nodded, stare firmly affixed to the ground.

“Yes, Miss.”

“Are you sure? You know this mission depends upon your unconditional loyalty, correct?”

“I’m sure, Miss.”

“That’s very good to hear. I’m sure you’ll want to prove your ability to be objective, so you’ll be leading the turning of that man you were so hung up on.”  _A test,_ Alpha knew, trying to keep her thoughts moving at an acceptable pace.  _If I pass, she’ll trust me again. If I fail, well. I won’t fail._

If she betrayed the Vixens, there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that they would kill her. She knew too much, she had been too high in the ranks for too long to peacefully leave. The only real question was whether or not Miss would do it herself.

Alpha’s mother had never much cared for her family.

She pushed it from her mind, mainly because she was pretty sure the answer was yes. It wasn’t something she should waste her energy on. Failure had never been an option. It hadn’t been an option when she ran her first mission at the age of eight. It wasn’t an option now.

To hell with the insurgent. He didn’t give a damn about her. The only people who had ever watched her back were the Vixens, and she would not turn against them for someone who would never do the same for her. Besides, it wasn’t as if the procedure would kill him, she could personally attest to that. It would make him wish he was dead, would make him scream and cry and beg, but he’d live, because he had to. Just like she lived. Because she had to. He was just a pawn in the game. And it wouldn’t be long before the men realized that the Vixens had checkmate the whole time.

••••

The time for false hope was over. No longer would our heroes be allowed to believe they were safe, happy, together, or whole. Things had perhaps never been worse than they were at that moment. Patrick’s attempted rescue team were now waking up in three separate rooms without the slightest bit of context as to where they were and why they were there. Away from each other, away from Patrick who was their only hope at understanding their situation, and away from any prayer of escape. On their own against an evil force more powerful than their minds could fathom. It was no longer just the briefcase in danger. Their very lives were at stake.

Things were not looking up, and nothing short of a miracle could guarantee our heroes would remain in one piece.

Patrick sat with a giant belt across his chest, binding him to the chair he sat in, thin white cording holding his wrists to the arms of it with no regard for the pain it would send coursing through his mutilated arm upon his awakening. He was in a darkened chapel with a stained glass mural behind him, its beauty unsettling and out-of-place in the face of such an ungodly fate. Electrodes were attached to his temples and wires were running down his back, chilling against the bare skin under his shirt. He was still out cold, oblivious to the buzzing, whirring, and spinning of the ominous machines enveloping him.

His fellow Defenders were all trapped in straitjackets, alone for the time being, unconscious and defenseless to their strange surroundings.

Pete was slouched on a stool, sweating beneath at least a dozen bare light bulbs that hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly as if to the beat of a song unsung. A blood-red carpet ran from his chair to the door, inviting fate to come on down and have a swing at him. Behind a semicircle of red ropes, there were at least ten mannequins with cameras around their necks, and the brightest light shone harshly on his unmoving body.

Joe’s perch was a similar wooden stool, head bent so far forward that he ran the risk of toppling from it and a curly brown mop of hair was all that could be seen. A blue curtain hung behind him, and two spotlights shone from either side of the stage he had been placed on. A shining silver microphone stood rigid in front of him, patiently waiting for him to wake up.

Andy was under a bit more scrutiny while slumped in a chair, being filmed by a video camera and ears deafened by chunky orange headphones. It looked like a normal enough living room. Given, one out of the 1960s, but an ordinary one nonetheless. Ordinary. Yeah right. Everything in the room was all the same sickly shade of what Andy would refer to as ‘baby puke green’. The armchair and classic tube television, both of which were older than Andy, the shag carpet, the coffee table, even the walls were stained the same strange color. He’d have time later to be disgusted by it.

It seemed oddly tame for the brand of horrors these women typically subscribed to. But there was a reason, a reason for everything they did and this was no exception. They were meant to be lulled into a false sense of security.  _Panic fouls the meat,_ their leader always told them.  _Make them feel safe before you take it away._ It was a concentrated nightmare, as the Defenders would soon find out.

As the women started down the hallways to meet the boys and inject the necessary sense of doom, each of them slowly came back to the land of the living. Their heads raised up, their eyes got wide, and their frantic hearts kicked against their chests.

Well, most of them were frantic. For Patrick, this was just the same shit on a different day. The pain was just dull enough to allow him to string thoughts together, and he thanked God for small mercies. He was unquestionably the unluckiest of all the Defenders, but at least he had some semblance of an idea what was happening. It lessened the panic. Made it almost tolerable.

Almost.

Patrick blinked hard and set himself to a purpose instead of dwelling on his own misery and misfortune.  _Find out what the machines do. Find out what they’ll do to you._ He tried not to feel the pressure against the bloody stump where his wrist ended, tried not to analyze the electrodes he was hooked up to, and forced his blurry vision to center on the labels of the dials.

He swiftly realized this wasn’t the right plan of action for keeping calm when the first dial’s name turned out to be “Evil-Meter”.

The panic started to slam into him full-force, and understandably so. Because it’s highly unlikely an evil meter is something good, especially when it’s hooked up to  **you.**

 _No way out. No allies. No chance. The only way out of this is through,_ Patrick told himself, trying to ground his thoughts in reality. Even if that reality was unfathomably depressing and horrible, fear of the unknown was worse. It felt like weeks since he had a definitive sense of what was real and what wasn’t, and it hadn’t taken long for him to come to grips with the fact that any remotely pleasant experience was most likely a product of thick scar tissue wrapped around his mind to protect the remnants of his sanity.

That, or hallucinogenic drugs. A table shrouded in smoke and orange clouds came to mind. His friends came to mind. Needles and snakes and blood came to mind. Convincing himself that none of it had been real was much easier to swallow, even if it meant he was still alone.

Besides, it was better this way. It was better if his friends hadn’t come for him after all. Because it meant that they were still safe, that the mission might still be salvaged, that they hadn’t lost sight of what truly mattered. Patrick’s life was forfeit, but the case didn’t have to die with him. He hadn’t really believed his friends would be willing to leave him behind in order to protect what was truly important. Being wrong for once would’ve been a welcome change of pace.

Not to mention, if the Vixens were to lose the case, lose their chance to ‘Silence the Noise’, lose the opportunity to create some sort of evil monster from Patrick’s ashes, well… what worth would his life really have?

What would it be like to finally die? Patrick could find nothing but relief in the idea.

Far enough away that Patrick had no hope of hearing them, the other Defenders had finally closed a tight hand around consciousness and were making sure everyone knew. Their screams rang off the walls of their prisons, amplifying the loneliness, putting the silence on blast. Arms jerked against sleeves stronger than any resistance that muscles could invent, and shoulders burned from the exertion but would not be deterred by futility. Patrick knew better than to scream for no reason. There would be plenty of reason to be had soon, that he was sure of.

It didn’t take long for the mysterious machines to begin beeping, needles jumping to life, giving Patrick’s heart a start. His mind told him the torment was about to begin again even as his heart railed against the idea.

Patrick could have been considered an optimist once. An idealist, even. But no longer. Now, he knew better. Life was one pain overcome by the next, a competition not between good and bad but between bad and worse. A happy ending wasn’t in the cards for him. It was now only a matter of whether or not his life would hold meaning. Whether or not his friends could save what had to remain the top priority. Not Patrick. The case.

As if they could hear his thoughts, the harbingers of his ultimate demise strode into the chapel, smiling brightly as if he were an old friend. Patrick did his best not to make his dread known, but as their grins grew wider he knew he had failed miserably. In his mind, he begged them to stay away, to turn around, to leave him to stew in his misery alone. But he wouldn’t make those desires known. The women would only twist them into something monstrous.

Short brown hair and a sharp smile kicked at the back of his mind.  _Mismatch_ , his memory supplied, refusing to divulge where it had discovered the name. But the pieces were beginning to fit themselves together, the times he had seen her, the things she had done, scraps of humanity and fragility buried in the stone-cold demeanor. She pouted at him as she approached.

“What? You aren’t happy to see us?” Patrick set his jaw and refused a reply. “How come, sweetheart? I thought we really made a connection with all the time we’ve spent together.” She pushed his bangs out of his face and ran the back of her knuckles down his cheek.

“Go to hell,” Patrick spat out, trying to jerk his head out of her reach.

“You first,” she snarled, yanking his head back by his hair until his neck screamed out in protest. Patrick let out a strangled groan and did his best to ignore the little twitches that crawled down his spine.

If pain was all that was coming his way, he could take it. There were worse things.

Joe knew no one could hear him. And really, he wasn’t trying to attract attention anyway. He wasn’t quite sure where he was or why, but he was pretty certain his captors had less than benevolent intentions and if they felt the need to silence him, they wouldn’t do it by asking nicely.  _Straitjacket,_ Joe thought.  _So they can’t easily overpower me on their own. They left me alone, so they must be fairly confident I won’t make it out of here._ Analyzing the situation was making him feel a little more like himself.

Bits and pieces of the last few hours were beginning to come into place, and he remembered seeing the guys and feeling that fiery happiness burn in his chest for possibly the last time. He remembered feeling out of control in the best way, and seeing Patrick feeling like coming home after a long tour. He remembered freedom.

He remembered evil clad in black with a deadly beautiful smile and Patrick screaming and the way Pete wheezed after getting hit with something hard by someone harder.

He remembered too much.

But Joe liked to solve problems as soon as they came up, and he knew he could get himself out of pretty much any situation as long as he kept his cool.

But concentration was key, and concentrating became especially hard to do when three young children filed into the room, talking excitedly to each other. And Joe… Joe didn’t know what to make of that. His captor seemed too organized to just let children wander into their prisoner’s room, but he had gotten the impression that they were practical and pragmatic, and recruiting child soldiers seemed out of character. Not to mention, these kids weren’t exactly disciplined robots. So why were they there?

“Hey, you guys wanna play a game?” They all paused in front of him and fell silent. He hoped he actually had their attention. “It’s called the Quiet Game. First person to talk loses.” Joe explained gently, thinking of his own daughter as he plastered a warm smile onto his face. Kids were usually harmless and it wasn’t their fault he was nervous and keyed-up and panicky. They gave him blank stares in response.

Foolishly, Joe assumed he had succeeded. He was just about to give them an approving nod and go back to assessing his situation when they began screaming incoherently again, holding hands and traveling in a slow circle around him, far too close for comfort.

Child soldiers it is, then.

Andy wondered absently about the purpose of headphones without music. Not that he was complaining. His whole body felt like crap. Lungs constricted, head pounding, even the blood seemed to burn his veins. He didn’t need anything blasting in his ears to add to the growing migraine behind his eyes.

And Andy, whose body had always been his temple, didn’t really want to examine what might have happened to make him feel like poisoned garbage. He knew there were things he should be able to remember and couldn’t. Important things that might help him escape, save the secret, or find his friends. But the implications were too much to face. In a detached sort of way that didn’t feel the gravity of the words, he’d rather die than find out what had happened to him.

A blonde woman in a black fur coat paused in the doorway of his room, smirking at the way the oblivious man struggled against the helplessness closing in on him. He didn’t even look up as she slowly made her way towards him, savoring every frantic second of his fear and confusion. She was almost on top of him before he noticed her, sharp movements dying as he stared up into her unfeeling eyes. Ears deafened, he felt every touch dialed up to 11 as she ran her nails from his temple to his jawbone before grabbing his chin aggressively. Then there was no refuge from the merciless chill of her stare. Something in her eyes as she turned the record player on told him whatever he had gone through before would be nothing compared to what lay ahead of him.

Pete knew it made him an uncommitted asshole with a deeply unhealthy obsession, but his thoughts were with Patrick and only Patrick. Not the case, his sworn responsibility that he had promised his life to. Not with whatever grisly fate was about to befall him, or what the cameras in the room meant. Not even with his other band members. Only Patrick. Patrick’s hand at his door, Patrick’s drunken smile under the chandelier, and the fact that half his memories were hidden under a thick storm cloud that he couldn’t lift no matter how hard he tried. There were ghosts within it, bright lights and group hugs and being set free.

Somewhere between what was real and what wasn’t was the taste of Patrick’s lips on his. That was what made him sure he couldn’t trust his mind anymore. Because that hadn’t happened hours ago, it had happened years ago when Pete was a selfish monster who made everyone miserable for his own personal entertainment. Back when he almost lost Patrick for good. Back when he used the people he loved and threw them away when he was done with them and cut Patrick deeper than any enemy ever had.

Surely that was his brain bringing up old wounds to chip away at his fragile happiness. It wouldn’t exactly be the first time.

He tried to tell himself his thoughts were with Patrick because his friend had the answers he needed. Patrick spent hours alone with these women, surely he knew the whys and the hows that should be plaguing Pete right now. Patrick would have explanations like he always did and he would solve the problems before they even came up because that was who Patrick was, who they needed him to be, and Patrick never failed when someone needed him.

But really, he didn’t care if Patrick could fix this, didn’t care about what Patrick had to contribute that could help get them out of here. He cared about the way Patrick smelled and the musical tilt to his voice, cared about his calloused, careful hands and his bright, beautiful eyes. He cared about why those memories were haunting him and he cared about apologizing. When he got the guts to.  _If_ he got the guts to.

 _Speaking of guts,_ Pete mused to himself,  _irony is a cruel mistress._

A woman with a hook was slowly advancing upon him, and he was beginning to wonder if his own guts would soon be torn from his body. Seemed like the kind of thing karma was into nowadays. And a camera. This day just kept getting better and better. Pete was too far gone worrying about Patrick and his impending evisceration to care about the strange penchant for photography that his captors seemed to have. Because now there was a weapon. A sharp, ripping thing and he was helpless and bound and alone with her, and before he knew it, the flash was going off in his face.

The panic that was already manifesting in his chest exploded in his veins and his chest stuttered so hard he thought his heart might break through his binds. He tried to blink the bright spots from his eyes, but now the bursts of light were coming from every side. The anxious kick made it impossible to breathe, and as he got more and more lightheaded, he suddenly understood why there were cameras everywhere.

The other woman was beginning to jerk Patrick’s chair back and forth as the first retained her strong hold on his hair. He gasped in pain as his neck was bent farther back and tried to resist between the bouts of vertigo that were beginning to torment his brain.

“Stop it.” It was supposed to be a demand but it came out more like a breathless whimper, not that it mattered. Not even a little. He wondered why he even opened his mouth around them for anything other than a scream. The sound of his own voice comforted him somehow. It was the only shred of normalcy he had left to cling to. Not that he could even hear himself over the blood pounding furiously in his ears.

He wished he knew what they were doing to his body. Why they were doing it. He was sure the truth was horrible. But not knowing was worse. Letting his fractured mind mull over the words “Evil-Meter” over and over again, cutting itself open on the sharp edges deeper every time.

Barely visible through the thickening cloud of madness was another dial reading “direct current”. Direct current. A small part of his mind said,  _they wouldn’t electrocute me. They **wouldn’t.**_  The rest of it, the part that had long ago let go of any remaining crumbs of optimism, knew worse had come before it, and worse was yet to come.

Joe wanted to feel bad for the kids. Really, he did. He tried to think about his own daughter being forcibly recruited into someone’s sick revenge scheme, tried to think about how dirty it would make him feel as a father, how easily a carefree childhood could turn into a nightmare. It was horrible, what was done to these kids.

But his muscles still begged him for violence with the way they were screaming in his ears. He just wanted it all to stop. Joe hated how okay he was with the concept of something horrible happening to these children if it meant he could be left alone for even a few precious minutes. But he had always known that one had to become a monster in order to fight the monsters of this world. He just never thought that person would be him.

The high road had a nice view, but you couldn’t exactly march an army down it.

In the midst of the chaos and noise, Joe’s brain conceded that he would not be able to leave this room with all of his values still intact. There was only one way out of a situation like this, and the path was not pretty and white and perfect. It was muddy and filthy and ugly, and that was just how it had to be.

Almost as if they could feel the positivity leave Joe’s body, the children ran from him. Even though it was what he had been praying for over the past (what felt like) hours, it made him nervous. Things didn’t happen here just because he wanted them to. Something made them leave, and they would bring no relief back with them, only different brands of suffering. And he didn’t know how to be ready for what came next. He wanted Patrick. He wanted an explanation. He wanted a single goddamn thing that made sense.

Andy had been trying to block out the sound. Honestly, he was trying. He had become an expert at blocking out the sound of Pete Wentz’s voice, and nothing should be more difficult than that. But it grated on his nerves in a way Pete’s sleep-deprived ranting never had. Because underneath it, even when Pete was at his least lucid and making negative sense, even when he threw cutting insults out like invitations, even when he tried to bring every one of them down into his pit of self-hatred so he wouldn’t be alone, there was still love underneath it all. Andy was still willing to bear it because Pete was his brother, his family, and you don’t leave family behind when things get messy.

This noise was not family. This noise was death and straight lines and corpses and boxes in boxes in boxes. This noise was the farthest thing from music to ever come out of a record player and Andy would rather rip his ears off and never hear again than bear witness to one more second of it. He knew, realistically, that even a bullet wouldn’t get this sound out of his head. He’d hear it the rest of his life.

If he couldn’t purge it from his brain, well, he wanted to take every damn woman from this operation down with him, starting with the one who currently felt the need to crawl on her hands and knees towards the ghastly old TV with the live feed of him on it. Over his pained and horrified face, the word “Congratulations” blinked like a curse, binding him to his suffering and mirroring it back at him.

 _Congratulations?_ Andy wondered somewhere inside the mania.  _For what? Being a new age anarchist trapped in the ’60s?_ _Congratulations for holding onto my sanity this long just to lose it to a bunch of nobodies who don’t deserve to see me fall apart like this?_

The room, the noise, the woman blasted in his ears, crawled down his spine, stood his hair on end. The hatred burned through Andy’s veins in a way he hoped nothing else ever had. If he could turn it all to ashes, he would. Even if it meant going down in the flames himself.

Pete hadn’t  _forgotten,_ per se, what a panic attack without Patrick felt like. It was the sort of thing you can’t forget,  _like riding a bike,_ Pete thought with a bitter sneer. He hadn’t forgotten, but it had been years since he’d had to stare down the barrel of this particular gun. The last time he had truly been hit with the ‘curl up in a ball in the corner and hope you can disappear forever’ sort had been during the hiatus after several months had passed without speaking to his best friend. Even then, if he could’ve gotten his numb, shaking fingers to cooperate, he would’ve dialed up his singer just to hear his voice. It could always bring him out the other side.

Pete knew if he let the anxiety grab hold now, if he broke down in front of this woman, he’d be well and truly defenseless. That just made the panic even worse. Each camera brought with it a fresh, raw memory, and the walls he tried to put in front of them were never strong enough. It was like being mobbed by the press, but if he were to crack under the pressure, they would swallow him whole. It brought back a whole host of feelings he never wanted to go through again.

Privacy violated. Life picked apart. Secrets exposed. Mistakes broadcasted. Guard up every minute of every day. Pouring his love into person after person just to discover they never actually cared. Being used over and over and over again and coming back for more because he’s never known when to quit, never felt he was worth anything more than a cheap fuck and a couple pretty lies.

And dammit, this wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. He had talked this out with Patrick, they had created a battle plan together, Pete avoided paparazzi like the plague and it had worked well for years. Things were supposed to be okay now, Pete was supposed to be able to feel safe, and he had grown so used to the idea that he didn’t know what to do if he wasn’t.

Patrick had told him the pain was over. The danger was over. The loneliness was over. But Patrick couldn’t protect him anymore. Patrick was the one who needed his protection. And Pete was too busy losing his shit in the flashing lights to even get near him.

The straitjacket wouldn’t let his chest expand and he was losing the feeling in his fingertips now. His lungs were burning and he could feel the blood draining from his brain, the focus bleeding out in horrible gushes, and the edges of his vision were blackening like burnt paper. Adrenaline was clouding his vision and his judgment and as he was about to surrender to the undertow, it hit him.

What he had first seen as a death sentence could be his ticket out.

He was  _alone_ with her.

Now was his chance. All he had to do was put one of his oldest skills to the test. Faking it. The signature Pete Wentz straight guy charm. This, this he could handle.

Pete forced the panic from his eyes and metered his breathing out, sending the anxiety down below the surface where it could simmer unobserved. “Why don’t you put that camera down and come over here?” He purred.

“Noise.” She muttered at him as she took a different angle. The flash exploded in Pete’s face again, white spots dancing behind closed eyelids. He filed the discomfort away with two dozen other unattractive emotions that couldn’t possibly be useful right now.

“I don’t know about you, but I just want a chance to relax. Doesn’t this job stress you out?”

“Quiet, heathen.” It was a growl. Like she had been given a crash course on how not to react to Pete Wentz.

“Are you worried you’ll forget what I look like? I can give you something better than a photo to remember me by.” The glare she gave him could’ve melted steel. But then something seemed to click in her eyes. Pete knew her participation would come with some sort of evil twist, but if he could get her to remove his restraints, it didn’t much matter what else had to be done.

“Oh?”

“I figure, this might be my last night on Earth. I don’t see a way out of this for me. And, well, I’d like to do one more thing as a free man. And I’d…” Pete licked his lips, “a woman as beautiful as you… that’s one hell of a dying wish.” He let a shy smile come across his face as her grip on the camera loosened slightly. A sociopath couldn’t be seduced, he knew, but he was hoping her sick mind could latch onto the idea of having him so willingly vulnerable.

Pete watched the camera fall to the floor as she approached him. “You are an insolent leech that preys on the weak and defenseless. I hope you know that I am neither.”

“What are you, then?”

“Not about to fall for this scheme of yours.”

“Scheme? Honey, I’m way too tired for scheming. I just want one last happy memory to hold onto when this all inevitably goes to shit.” She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek.

“Trust me, love, this memory won’t be happy,” she whispered in his ear. Then Pete felt her slight weight upon his lap as her arms wrapped around his neck. At first, one of her hands went for his throat, but he brought his lips to hers in an attempt to dissuade her from violence. She reciprocated the kiss more enthusiastically than he expected, even as he could feel the wheels turning in her head for a way to use this against him. As she started kissing down his neck, he forced a porn-star-worthy moan from his lips and let loose the breathless request:

“Take off my jacket.” At first, he thought she didn’t hear him, but then her reply ghosted across his skin.

“Now, why would I do that?”

“I wanna touch you. Let me make you feel good.” She smirked against his neck and sunk razor teeth into his skin. Pete involuntarily sucked in a sharp breath and forced himself to arch into it.

“You aren’t here to feel good, and neither am I, sweetheart.”

“What if I gave you something in return?” She threaded slim fingers into his hair and pulled back on it. Not roughly, more of a warning.

“I’m listening.” Pete tensed his muscles and sent a silent apology to Patrick for what he was about to do.

“I know things about Patrick. Things even your boss doesn’t know. And I’ll tell you all of it. Just give me five minutes with you. Without this jacket.” She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. Pete shrugged as best he could. “What do I have to lose? He got himself kidnapped. Why should I be loyal to him? Why should I sacrifice my last few hours of life for someone who couldn’t handle the  _one_ responsibility we gave him? Patrick’s not worth my effort anymore. If I’m gonna die, it’ll be on my terms, not his. What do you say?”

“What kind of information are you offering?”

“Whatever kind you want. I know him like the back of my hand. What scares him, what gives him hope, I know the worst things that have ever happened to him, hell, I could put three words together and have him curled up in a ball, crying. Kid’s been my shadow for what? Ten years? I know everything there is to know.”

“Why should I make a deal with you when I could just as easily use my more  _persuasive_ strategies to loosen your tongue? You saw what we’re capable of, what we did to your friend. You really think you could withstand us?”

“First of all, he’s not my  _friend._ He’s more like an annoying little brother I get along with because I have to. And maybe I couldn’t, but wouldn’t it be more pleasant and quicker for both of us if we just do it my way?”

“He’ll never love you, you know. Not the way you want him to.” Pete tried not to let the heat come into his face as the truth of her words sent a tidal wave of shame over him.

“I know. Why do you think I’m doing this?” She shrugged and let the hair slide out from between her fingers and her free hand found its way behind his back. He leaned forward to help her along and tried not to think too hard about how strikingly similar this was to most of his hookups. Both using each other as a means to an end, a substitute for what they really wanted, an escape from what they had to do.

Pete supposed he could analyze how fucked up that was after he got the hell out of here.

Finally, the jacket came loose and Pete’s shoulders cried out in relief. He let loose a soft moan of pleasure as the tension flooded from them. As she stood and dragged him up with her, Pete gently brought his lips to hers. “Thank you,” he breathed as he smiled against her mouth.

“You best make this worth my while.”

“Oh, I will,” he promised as he wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close to him and sighing against her. Pete felt her muscles let go of a fraction of their tension and adrenaline flooded his body. He didn’t give himself a chance to second-guess what he had to do.

His feet found their way to a fighting stance, and he slammed his knee into her ribs with every ounce of strength that remained in his exhausted body. She fell to the floor with a cry that was more surprise than pain. Spurring his weakened muscles to action, Pete followed her to the floor and straddled her body as he forcefully pried the hook from her grasp.

“You’re a coward!” She shouted at him. “A coward and a—” Pete didn’t care to find out what else he was as he plunged the hook into her chest. He didn’t spare a thought to the gurgle of blood filling her lungs, didn’t register the hot crimson flash across his face, just drove the sharp point into her sternum again and again until her thrashing body found an eerie stillness. Only when her blood made the hook too slippery to hold and Pete’s breath came hard enough in his chest that he felt he was the one being impaled did he come back to himself enough to hold his muscles still. Pete sat back on his knees and scrubbed his hands across his face, forcing himself to stare into her lifeless eyes.

“You won’t win.” He told the body, trying to force conviction he didn’t feel into his voice. “You will not hurt my friends again.” It didn’t sit still under his skin, didn’t feel right in his bones, the fact he just took someone’s life.

 _Can’t stay here,_ he told himself.  _Can’t stare her back to life._ He forced himself back to shaking feet and spared one last glance her way. Cold and dead, sprawled beneath him, blood he could now never wash from his hands.

He couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty. He knew it would come, knew the horrible responsibility would crash down on him like a tidal wave and drag him under, knew he would collapse under the weight of his sins. But for now, he knew saving himself meant keeping Patrick and Joe and Andy safe, even if only for a few more precious minutes, and that was enough.

“Here’s your insider information about Patrick: he’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. You can’t break him, because his power comes from a place you can’t touch. He’s capable in ways you could never understand. You’ll never destroy him. You should’ve left us alone. Now, well. Now I’ll kill every last one of you before I give you a chance to hurt the people I love again.”

Patrick was getting sick and tired of, well, everything. Of living, of breathing, of  _hurting._  Hurting all the time. He was sick of feeling half an inch from collapsing, he was sick of trying, and more than anything, he was sick of failing.

Patrick knew who he was and what he wanted, and nothing would change that. Which begged the question, then, who was this creature he had become? Because surely the real Patrick Stump wouldn’t be sitting here helpless as his one true passion was ripped out of him, piece by piece, cell by cell. Music was Patrick’s life. It had given him hope when he had nothing, it had led him to the best friends he’d ever known, it was everything to him. But for the first time, Patrick was starting to think maybe music wasn’t such a good thing. Maybe out of all the curses he and Pete had brought to this world, maybe music was the worst of them. Maybe his whole life was built around a lie.

From the time the first note drifted through their speakers, Patrick could tell there was something wrong. A shock, a strange tingle echoing through his body. It was a deep bass note, something Pete would play, and he quickly attributed it to how much he missed his friend. Patrick’s body hadn’t been making sense for a while now, and feeling the loss of his friend like a physical pain was very inside the realm of possibility. But then it didn’t go away. An electric sensation, the tingle quickly became a burn trapped inside his veins, turning him to ashes from the inside out. Even with all the wrong inside his body, he knew that wasn’t something he could be making up in his head.

The burn transformed into a searing flash of rage and Patrick distantly heard a harsh scream rip its way through the melody. He wondered in a detached sort of way if it was his or someone else’s. That was the last coherent thought his mind could invent before the strange anger took hold of him, bubbling up through his chest and infecting the folds of his brain, turning the whole room a horrible bloody red.

It was gone as quickly as it came as a movement out of the corner of his eye sent the sensation flooding away from him, fading to the same distant corner full of things that might be real. Patrick opened his mouth to speak and found that his words wouldn’t come. He heard their snickering like it was underwater, and it was whole minutes until he was able to come up for air.

“The… ‘uck you done t’me?” He slurred out, tongue thick and heavy and lips numb. Mismatch crouched to meet his eyes and shot him a pitying smile.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, love. Just sit back and let it happen.” He opened his mouth for another half-drunken protest, but the first quiet, deep bass notes of the song were already floating through his ears again, intense panic flooding his system as the prickling sensation slithered across his skin.

“Please, don’t—” it was caught between a desperate plea and a broken whisper and it didn’t matter, he knew it didn’t. He was a cog in the machine, a spoke in the wheel, a cold component of the plan and his words and feelings didn’t mean a thing to them. It began slow, pain just this side of bearable, allowing him to believe they were being merciful. The shock traveled up his spine, shrank back down to the base, and then faded away. But then, the guitar and drums joined the bass line and Patrick’s head unconsciously snapped against the back of the chair, muscles seized from his command like the strings on a puppet. The dull ache in his neck didn’t even register amongst the overwhelming press of wrenching pain that began to flow through his body.

With the last bit of control he still possessed, he flicked his eyes over to the direct current dial, and as it shot all the way up to 3, the rage washed over him once more. Suddenly there was shouting in his ears, a thousand voices of doubt and inadequacy and rejection blasting against a wall of white noise, thumping with the uneven race of his heart. The panic and anger pulsed heavy and hot in his bones, telling him he needed to move, needed to fight, needed to take this out on someone, something, anything. Needed to hurt something if he ever wanted to breathe again. He needed to get up, why couldn’t he just get up?

And then it was over, so fast it gave him whiplash, rage and heat and need receding to a vague sting in his chest. A scratch of sharp nails against his face, a soft chuckle in his ear, and he knew in what was left of his rational mind that this was exactly what they wanted. Whatever  _this_ was, exactly.

“I can’t believe it’s going to work on  _him._ ” Mismatch breathed in wonder. Patrick wanted to bare his teeth at her, wanted to slap her hands off of his face, wanted at the very least to scream her sins back at her but his eyes would barely focus on a single target and he knew words were far beyond his reach.

“It’d work faster if you’d stop turning it off, A.”

“Oh? Do you really want to explain to Miss why Silencer is dead? You want to go tell her you were incapable of following the simplest of instructions and her plan is now completely inviable? Let me know how that works out for you.”

“He’s strong. Far stronger than we anticipated. What if he escapes?” A cruel, bitter laugh cut through the air and suddenly the straps were being loosened, his limbs set free and his lungs finally able to draw in full breaths. A small flame of hope stirred in his chest. Maybe he was wrong about her. Maybe there was something human left in her yet. Patrick didn’t dare let the smile cross his face as he made the move to get up.

But he couldn’t.

He. Couldn’t. Move.

His muscles wouldn’t obey his commands, no matter how hysterical and panicked they became. There was no escape. Paralyzed, frozen, there was nothing he could do. The reality drowned him in a horrible mocking hopelessness that assured him this would be his prison forever. His panicked eyes shot from Mismatch’s bemused face to her partner’s impressed smirk.

“You were saying?” Mismatch asked.

“Alright, so it works. All the more reason to abandon this pretense of mercy you’re holding onto.”

“Mercy? Don’t make me laugh. Mercy would be torching the hell out of him and leaving him to die, and you know it,” she assured the other as she began reattaching his restraints.

“Go ahead,” Patrick gritted out through his clenched jaw. “Kill me. If I’m gonna die, at least let it be while there’s still some of me left.” Mismatch gave him an ugly smirk.

“Kill you? Sweetheart, you are the most important thing to us right now. The sweet embrace of death is far beyond your reach.” As despair and doubt settled deep in his heart, Patrick had to force himself to embrace the idea. He couldn’t die here. He wouldn’t die here. There was too much he still had to do. Too many people who still needed him, too many problems that still had to be fixed, and this couldn’t be the end.

He wouldn’t let this be the end. Maybe he couldn’t control anything, maybe he couldn’t even control his own body, but he would not let them take his life away from him too.

Pete’s breathing was too loud for him to hear his own thoughts as he sprinted down the hallway and away from his prison. He was grateful for the distraction, all things considered. The burn in his lungs distracted him from the guilt that pulsed through his veins to the traitorous beat of his heart.

Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.  _Why should you have a life when hers is gone?_ _How are you any better than she is?_

And Pete knew the answer to that question was both obvious and not nearly good enough.  _I’m better than her because I’m fighting for good, I’m fighting for what’s right, I’m fighting for everyone to be free and she’s fighting to control everyone._ Of course, he thought he was on the side of righteousness. When they killed, they were monsters, but when he killed, it was just what had to be done.

Not nearly good enough.

Murderer. Murderer.  _I didn’t have a choice._ _Not if I wanted to defend the faith, not if I wanted to save the world,_ _not if I wanted to protect my friends._

This was batshit. This was evil and torture and danger and cold-blooded killers and nothing he ever thought he’d be wrapped up in when he agreed to be the bassist for a shitty pop-punk band ten years prior.

Murderer.  _They hurt Patrick._

At the end of the day, what could really matter more than that? They hurt the most important person in his life. They mutilated him, dissected him, made sure he’d never be able to do the things he loved most ever again. Even if they somehow escaped this nightmare, Patrick would not, could not ever be the same again. And that Pete couldn’t forgive nor forget. To avenge his fallen friend, he’d gladly condemn his soul to hell a hundred times over.

Pete ducked into a dark room to catch his breath, leaning heavily against the closed door and allowing his exhausted legs to give out, sending him slowly to the floor. For a full minute all he could feel was the heat of fatigue permeating every inch of his body, sharp pain stabbing his chest with every gasping breath he drew in. When he finally found the energy to lift his gaze from the floor, he found himself wishing he could sink right into said floor and just stop.

Stop existing.

Stop making attempts to get out of this hellscape that only ever managed to get worse.

Forever.

Because across the room from him was a container marked ‘flammable’ surrounded on all sides by band memorabilia. Fall Out Boy band memorabilia. Their albums, their vinyl, their instruments, all inches from being set ablaze and little ambiguity about what the future held for them. It was a pile of Pete’s memories and Pete’s accomplishments and the only real things left that still made him happy. Reduced to fuel for an ever-growing blaze of hatred from people who did not  _understand._  Didn’t understand all the good their band had done, all the good they still had to do. Pete’s panic-fried brain couldn’t even begin to guess at the reasons they wanted to set fire to his life, could only push it back to the corner piled with things he didn’t have time to worry about right now.

He forced himself back to his feet and slammed his body into the door, pushing his way back into the hallway. He didn’t know how to find Patrick, nor Joe or Andy, didn’t know what he was fighting against or how to fight it, only knew that staying slumped in a corner and stirring his little pot of misery and self-pity wasn’t going to help anyone. Pete looked left and right in a confused fog, unsure where to go or how to even begin trying to fix any of this.

And then he heard it. Far off and muffled, but somehow unmistakable even though he’d never heard it before. A scream, high and thin and pained, desperate and terrified. A wounded noise of someone who needed help, someone who was inches away from giving up. Patrick’s scream.

Suddenly it didn’t matter that he didn’t know what to do or where to go. Because Patrick needed him. He finally had a chance to do something, something that could actually make a difference, and he’d be damned if he choked now. Pete took off at a sprint faster than even his lightning-quick racing thoughts. He had to find Patrick, had to save him from whatever was hurting him, had to keep moving, because if he didn’t—

Red lights and a shrill siren stopped him in his tracks, pierced his ears and echoed down the empty hallway. They must have found their fallen comrade. He couldn’t wait around for them to catch up to him. He was not going back to being a helpless prisoner. Never again.

There was only one thing left to do.

Run.

Joe knew the kids weren’t harmless. That illusion had long since been broken apart. The food they were angrily throwing at him flew directly in the face of that concept. Slimy, rotten egg dripped down his face, tomato matted down his hair, heads of lettuce clocked him upside the head. Damn demon brats threw hard for their size.

The worst part was, Joe didn’t understand what was so fucking awful about this situation. He didn’t know why his heart was pounding out of his chest or why his stomach had turned to ice. Couldn’t figure out why his limbs were completely locked up, couldn’t explain the clawing need to scream that had settled in his throat. The fear sat on his chest like an elephant, slowly choking the breath out of his body and leaving him without a molecule of strength left to protect himself from the onslaught.

His brain told him this was a terrifying nightmare finally given enough power to come to life and destroy him. Joe didn’t know how to handle anxiety or worry, he didn’t get bent out of shape when things went wrong the way Pete did. He always found Pete’s tendency to get wrapped up inside his own thoughts hard to relate to, couldn’t comprehend how someone could be so completely destroyed by a threat that wasn’t even real.

Joe thought he was maybe starting to understand now. The helplessness of knowing the invisible reality wasn’t there yet but could be fast approaching was a suffocating kind of horrible. You couldn’t fight what you couldn’t see, and Joe didn’t know how to rationalize this fear and pain away in the way he always tried to get Pete to do.

Joe felt the guilt closing cold hands around his throat, and as his battered body took hit after hit, he helplessly let it drag him down into its depths.

The walls were closing in around Andy, mocking laughter and taunts the only thing willing to interrupt the horrible sound that assaulted his ears. “This is your life now,” she shouted in his ear. “You’ll never escape this place. You will never see them again.” Andy had to hope this was just another horrible lie, a trick, because this couldn’t be his world forever. He wasn’t even sure if he could take this being his world for five more minutes, let alone the rest of his life. If this was all there was for him, a vacuum of conformity and monotony, feet glued to the floor anchored stubbornly in the past, well, that was hardly a life at all.

Andy considered himself among the most resilient people he knew, which was pretty elite company considering that list also held his fellow bandmates. Joe, who never let anything faze him, who refused to take a threat seriously and was intimidated by nothing and no one. Patrick, who could bounce back from anything ready not only to heal himself but to forgive the people who hurt him. Pete, who had proven time and time again that nothing could keep him down for good, that nothing could turn him so cold as to lose faith in the good in the world, even after he had lost faith in himself. Andy knew he belonged in the same conversation with these unbreakable people, or at least, he thought he had before this woman and this room became all he had left.

Now, well. Andy Hurley had never once considered giving in to the ugly things in his world before, and now he was right on the edge of letting them swallow him whole.

And then the harsh wail of the sirens ripped through the monotonous misery of Joe and Andy’s prisons. As Andy’s record was flipped and Joe’s captors threw harder and yelled louder as if possessed by the very demons that had thought up this nightmare, the screams that this fresh hell brought on joined the red flashing lights and whooping shriek of the alarms.

Having been on the edge of breaking down, this new brand of misery was all it took for Andy and Joe to pitch themselves towards oblivion.

The music was shut off once again as Patrick’s chin collided with his sternum, eyes squeezed shut tight and chest heaving. The fingernails he still had dug bloody crescents into his palm and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as he continuously bit his tongue to stop himself from begging them for a reprieve. For the millionth time, Mismatch’s smooth whisper drifted into his ears, the only companion he had in this endless sea of hurt and noise.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” And the voice was almost sweet, almost like a balm to his wounds, if only he could ignore what lay beneath it. “The music hurts, I know, sweetheart. The noise is pain.” Patrick couldn’t tell if the agony was more the electricity or the feeling of been torn in two by different ideas of who he was, who he needed to be both to survive this and to save what was left of his mission. He wasn’t sure he could be either of them. Wasn’t sure he could hold onto his passion long enough to withstand this and come out the other side able to save his friends. Wasn’t sure he was capable of rescuing the responsibility they were trusted with anymore, either.

All he knew was giving up wasn’t an option. Not now. Not while there was a breath still in his lungs and a coherent thought left in his brain.

“Not… music.” Patrick groaned through his teeth. “You.”

“You’re not very good at this game, Trick,” her partner told him. Somewhere in the recesses of his memory, buried under layers of agony and fear, there was a surge of anger at hearing a name he knew didn’t have the permission to come from those lips. Didn’t have permission to come from anyone but Pete. Anger that screamed at him to act, that mocked him for his weakness and submission to his fate. Anger that left him feeling even more disgusted with himself than the people keeping him prisoner.

Between entertaining the idea of betraying his love of music and being completely helpless to what was being done to his body, there was a gnawing self-loathing growing in Patrick’s heart that he couldn’t fight.

But if the pipe dream of being a rock star hadn’t been given a life and a voice, if his half-baked wish had stayed just that, this hell would’ve never reached them. If he had just been  _normal,_ if he could’ve just sat at a desk and let his dreams stay dreams and die in the past like everyone else, he’d be safe at home, blissfully unaware pain like this even existed, only having lost a more fulfilling life instead of a fucking hand and a lung and most of his sanity.

Patrick was still able to banish the traitorous thoughts from his head, but he knew at the rate his brain was being turned to mush, it wasn’t the kind of thing he could fight against forever. Eventually they would beat him, a matter of when and not if. He tried to direct the hatred outward at the wicked women dissecting his passion as they tore it from his heart, but the effort only made it burn hotter as it attacked him from the inside.

Mismatch didn’t seem perturbed by his stubbornness. She crouched to eye level with him, multicolored eyes somehow flashing something near compassion underneath layers of ice and emptiness. “You know as well as I do that you don’t have much of this fight left in you. You think you’re brave for what you’re doing, you think this will give you something to hold onto when you inevitably succumb. Or maybe you’re trying to prove something, to yourself, to us. But we don’t give a damn if you’re weak or strong, and soon there won’t be enough of you left for you to care either. It doesn’t need to be this hard.” Patrick grit his teeth and stared back at her, defiance and fire still blazing in his eyes. She shook her head and straightened back to her full height, addressing her subordinate. “Turn it up. He can’t last forever.”

Patrick had grown used to being proven wrong over the past few days, but never so spectacularly as this. Because he had been sure it couldn’t get worse. But in the split second he had to hear the music before the pain began, he knew he was mistaken.

The voice was his own. The music he had written, the melodies he had designed.

And then there was no time for him to process the horrible truth as the agony took hold of his senses once again. This time it was bone-chilling, freezing the hot sweat covering his body to his skin, pulsating viciously through every inch of him. He cried out despite his best efforts to hold it in, startling even himself with how loud and terrified and desperate it sounded. Thousands of tiny syringes were sinking into his skin and injecting frost in his veins, a cold burn that penetrated deep to his bones and his lungs and his spine. Shiver after violent shiver took hold of his body, and then the rage whispered in his ear.

“Kill them,” it was barely a breath against his skin, but he heard it nonetheless. “Every. Last. One. Silence their rebellion for good.”

“Wha…” He managed to slur out. “What?”

“The insurgents. The musicians. End their pathetic existence and you will be set free.” Patrick tried to form the word “No”, but all that came out was a dry sob. Every muscle in his body was seizing up, making movement nearly impossible as wave after wave of stabbing pain sent shudders through his core. It was an impossible fight just to get air into his lungs as his eyes rolled into his head and his head snapped back against the chair, vision blackening at the edges as the breath was punched out of him once again.

_Please let me pass out. Please. Anything to get rid of this._

A scalding inferno incinerated the subzero hell, melting his skin, searing his bones. The scream tore its way from his throat, the first noise he’d been able to make in a few solid minutes.

“Go ahead. Yell. Cry. It won’t change anything.” It sounded miles away, removed from his body, floating above him as he was dragged farther and farther under a sea of lava and fire. Cracking pain lay waste to his chest, breaking his ribs, puncturing his lungs.

“Kill them.”  _Fuck you._ Words were far beyond him now. “It’ll be easy. Easier than this. Easier than fighting.” The fury came to him like a familiar enemy, wrapping its hand around his heart and squeezing, ripping him to shreds. All he wanted, all he knew how to want, was to hurt something the way he was being hurt, sure that would make this feeling leave him. Didn’t these women deserve the same pain they were inflicting on him? Didn’t they deserve to be strapped down and dissected? To have someone go inside their head and  _play,_ just to see how far they could be pushed? Didn’t they deserve anything that could compare to the destruction being dealt to him?

And then it was over.

Patrick’s head hung heavily as he fought to catch his breath for several full minutes, sizzling lungs and a raw throat making the task undoable. The blood dribbled from his lips, body quivering and mind throbbing with the horrible knowledge of the monster he was, the animal he was becoming. He could feel tears of shame and pain welling in his eyes, and he fought hard not to let them spill. He tasted blood. He couldn’t cry. His heaving chest stuttered with the broken sob that ripped him open, and he clenched his teeth around his grief as his body twitched out of his control.

“Is he seizing?” It wasn’t concern, unsurprising from the woman who was in favor of electrocuting him to death. More of a bored kind of curiosity.

“Exhaustion. Nothing to worry about.” Mismatch muttered a reply as she ran a hand through his hair.

“You’re trying to turn me into a weapon,” Patrick gasped, a little surprised the words would come even as they blurred into each other in a rush of breath.

“Not just trying, sweetheart. Succeeding. Spectacularly. Like I said, this isn’t the sort of thing you can fight.”

“I’ll…” he fought for breath, “I’ll never fight them. N-N-Not for you… n-not for anyone.”

“You’re right. You won’t fight them. You’ll  _kill_  them.” The humanity was absent in her words, and Patrick knew there was no chance she would help him now. Worse than the emptiness in her words was the truth, the confidence and sureness in them. She was right. He was losing the fight, and it was only going to get harder. He couldn’t think, couldn’t see straight, and only one thought had the strength to make itself heard.

You’ll kill them.

You know you will.

You’re too weak to fight this forever.

The air was closing in on him and he felt the idea like a thousand pounds on his chest, suffocating him. Blinding panic made his breath come even faster and he couldn’t do it, couldn’t think about it and couldn’t make it go away.

A shrill siren pierced his thoughts and red lights flashed, painting the room red, not unlike the blood that still burned Patrick’s veins to the beat of his heart.

“Alpha—” The subordinate started.

“Leave. I’ll take care of this.” Mismatch replied coldly. Once the partner was gone, she shook her bangs out of her eyes and brought her face inches from Patrick’s. He recoiled with what control he had in his body, and she exhaled in a frustrated way. Patrick knew the panic painted a clear picture on his face, but he couldn’t help it. He was scared. He was fucking scared as hell.

“Listen to me.” Patrick grunted in protest and tried to turn his face away from her. She grabbed it and roughly brought him back to meet her eyes. “It isn’t worth fighting.” It wasn’t like before, shouting his own helplessness back in his face. The buried compassion was coming up to the surface and Patrick didn’t, couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t real. Not after everything she had done.

“Just leave me alone.” It was still slurred and wrong and he wasn’t sure she could even understand him, but the annoyed look on her face said she got the gist of it.

“Shut up for a minute, will you? I’m trying… I’m trying to help you, okay?”

“Why—” Anger flashed for a brief moment.

“Don’t make me hurt you. I’ve got red in my ledger, okay? You’re making this too hard. You will become what they want you to be. I can’t stop it, you can’t stop it, this is bigger than we are. But it doesn’t need to feel like this. It doesn’t need to hurt like this. I know. I know the burn, the chill, I know you feel weak in your body and your soul, horrified and ashamed, right? I  _know._ I get it. And it only gets worse. You’re not brave, you’re not a hero, none of this matters. All that matters is you live through this, okay? You live through this and maybe you have a chance, but you’re going to lose this fight, Patrick. You’ll lose, you just don’t know it yet.”

_It’s an act. A lie. It has to be._ _Make me believe I have an ally, someone who wants to help, make me let my guard down just long enough to strike._ _She isn’t human. She can’t feel bad for me, can’t understand what I’m feeling, sociopaths don’t feel._

And maybe this ordeal had completely exhausted Patrick, beaten him down, made him hate himself in a way he didn’t know he could. Maybe his sanity was in shattered pieces at his feet and maybe he already knew he couldn’t really come out the other side of this unchanged and unbroken. But he’d be damned if he let someone like her tell him that everything he was wasn’t enough.

“If you wanted to help me… you’d let me go.”

“You’re hopeless.” And maybe she was right, maybe she was his only hope, and as she turned the machine back on and ran out the door, he wondered if his last chance was running away with her.

Beyond Patrick’s vision, the Evil Meter shot up past the halfway point. He was running out of time.

Pete couldn’t remember what direction the scream had come from anymore. The panic was buzzing too loud in his brain to discern thoughts from imagined threats and he knew he was running aimlessly in a place he didn’t know, could very possibly be running towards the danger he was working to avoid. But it had to be better than standing still. Had to be better than sitting back and letting this nightmare swallow him whole, even if that was what he wanted to do more than anything. Just collapse and wait for this all to end.

It didn’t matter what he wanted. What mattered was that Patrick was alone and in pain and Pete was free and had the opportunity to help him and he couldn’t waste that rare chance, especially not now when hope was so very hard for Patrick to come by.

When he first heard the footsteps behind him, he was sure he was making it up in his head. Pete had always had a very active and paranoid imagination, and creating threats that weren’t real was very in the realm of possibility for him. But he wasn’t totally sure how many of those women there actually were. Could be five, could be 500. And every last one could be looking for him right then.

Too anxious to let it go, Pete was about to make a move to look over his shoulder when his foot caught on the linoleum and he was sent careening to the floor. He slid a couple feet with the momentum and tried to use it to roll back to his feet, but the dull, thick pain slowed him down and reminded him that he was not only mentally exhausted, but physically worn out as well. Before he had the chance to recover, there were needle-sharp stiletto heels kicking at him full-force.

What an awful time for his anxiety to be right.

It hurt. He tried to tell himself it couldn’t compare to the horror of the room he escaped, couldn’t come close to touching everything Patrick had gone through, but rationalizing didn’t help much when this new pain gave his body every excuse he needed to finally give up.

 _Giving up won’t make it end,_ he told himself.  _It’ll only make it easier for them to destroy you and everyone you care about._ Pete slowly and laboriously pushed himself back to his feet, forcing himself to keep trying as they kicked him back down time and time again. He finally found solid footing on the floor and took off at a sprint, the immediate danger behind him spurring him forward, determined not to end up on his back and at their mercy again.

But how could he lose them in a place he didn’t understand but they called home?

Pete knew he had to prioritize his own safety if he wanted to be able to help anyone. Had to escape the people following him and look out for himself and stay free long enough to find someone he could help, someone he could trust.

The fleeting thought of self-preservation turned out to be a weak one as Pete opened the door to his right to discover a stranger in a straitjacket. Instincts told him to leave, shut the door on this person he didn’t know and didn’t need to help, that he only had so much time to spare and needed to spend it on the people he cared about. But one look into the man’s dark and hopeful eyes told Pete he’d never be able to abandon this person who clearly needed saving. Pete remembered all too well what it was like to be in this position. He had to kill, to become what he hated in order to escape, but this man didn’t have to if Pete could help him.

The man let out a terrified scream as Pete stared at him, and Pete quickly slammed the door shut behind him and clamped a hand over the man’s mouth.

“Hey. Hey!” Pete barked, receiving a blank stare in response. “Shut the hell up before they find both of us!” The man gave him a slow, skeptical nod, and Pete sighed. Where was a sense of urgency when he needed it? “I don’t have much time. Who are you?” There was hesitation in the stranger’s eyes, and Pete resisted a sudden strong urge to smack him.

Realistically, he knew the trepidation and fear wasn’t the other man’s fault. He probably would’ve had the same reaction if someone had tried to free him from his prison. But every second he spent here was a second less he had to find his friends, to save their mission, and he didn’t have time for politeness or sensitivity.

“I don’t know what you don’t understand about the concept of ‘we are both going to die if you can’t tell me what I need to know fast enough for me to do something about it’. You hear these sirens? You see these lights? Yeah, those are because of me. They are scouring this whole place for me right now, and it won’t be long until they end up here. They will not stop until they find me. You can imagine I don’t  _want_  them to find me, right? You’re their prisoner too, you must know what they do to people. All this hesitation from you is increasing the chances they find both of us. If you can’t help me, I can’t help you either. There are people I love who need me, and I can’t waste much more time here if I want to get to them before I’m inevitably taken prisoner again.” Pete’s bluntness seemed to startle the man to action, and he stuttered out a response.

“They call me the H-Herald.” Pete frowned.

“That’s your  _name?”_  The man nodded at him like he was a slow and stupid person. “Oh-kay? Why are you here?”

“Why are  _you_ here?” Pete hesitated. “That’s what I thought. You don’t trust me, I don’t trust you, just get me out of here and I’ll be out of your hair, and you can go find the people you actually care about. Please.”

Pete knew he had to give the stranger the chance he didn’t have. Leaving this place without becoming the evil he was trying to fight. With the hook, Pete cut the straps running down the Herald’s back, gave him a small nod, then dashed back out the door.

 _You may have just lost your chance._ _Because you saved someone you don’t even know. How will you forgive yourself if it’s too late for Patrick by the time you find him?_ Pete ignored the spiteful, angry voice. His karma needed all the help it could get.

He found his way back to the main hall and took off at a sprint once more, praying to a God he had long since given up on that they had lost his trail in his absence. And really, he should’ve known better than to count on an abandoned, imaginary protector to save his damned soul, especially considering the universe had always loved reminding him he was alone. He didn’t get more than 30 feet before he ran smack dab into one of his enemies. Stumbling backward, he took off in the opposite direction, hoping against hope the heels that his ribs still remembered would slow her down enough for him to get away. He took a sharp left and slid into the opening of a hallway.

Flattening himself against the wall and holding his breath to stay silent, he willed the anxiety attack flaming in his chest to wait just a few more minutes before it took over his body. The slow click of her heels got closer and closer, and he felt her pause at the mouth of his hiding place. Then an angry sigh was let out and she ran in the opposite direction, and Pete knew he had bought himself a few more precious minutes of safety.

He ducked into the room at the end of the hallway to let the anxiety take hold of him in relative peace and quiet, and quickly realized neither peace nor quiet could reach him where he was. Stained glass and pews surrounded him, and he could’ve laughed at the irony if he was capable of finding anything funny anymore.

A murderer. In a chapel. Life had a wicked sense of humor. Pete knew Patrick would tell him he was being unfair to himself. He would tell him to forgive himself and move on, that everyone did bad things and everyone had regrets, he knew Patrick would thank him for trying to do what was best for the mission. Patrick would know exactly what to say because Patrick…

Patrick was strapped to a chair at the front of the chapel. Patrick was attached to a million different wires and left alone to suffer and stew in his obvious agony. Head hanging forward to rest against his heaving chest, Pete’s best friend looked ready to collapse. It was a horrible thing to witness. Terrifying to see just how cruel human beings could be to one another. It was enough to make Pete ashamed to be of the same species as these people who had done God-knows-what to his best friend. Pete took a deep breath and pushed the anxiety all the way down, because this wasn’t about him and his fucking issues and his inability to be there for his friend when he was needed the most.

“What did they do to you, Trick?” Pete breathed as he slowly began to approach the horrible scene in front of him. Then, without warning, Patrick’s whole broken body jolted to life and his head snapped back hard against the chair. Pete winced involuntarily in sympathy as the beginnings of a scream dripped from his friend’s mouth, but it was swallowed back down as panic crept into Patrick’s eyes. Whatever had been done to him, it was a thousand times worse than Pete had expected. Than Pete even thought was possible. Every muscle in his body strained against the agony, back arching as he gasped for air.

God, it looked like it hurt. Anger started to worm its way through Pete’s brain, somewhere between the fear and the horror. His friend’s nails dug into his remaining palm hard enough that blood began to dribble down to the floor. And the other arm… Pete wasn’t even going to look at or think about, knowing the guilt and self-loathing would send him to his knees and Patrick needed him to keep it together right now.

Pete was almost afraid to approach Patrick considering his best friend looked overdue for an exorcism. Pete shivered at the way the empty eyes echoed back at him, as drool ran from the corner of his friend’s mouth and uncontrollable jerky movements seized him. Spine arching dramatically one second and folding him in half the next, his friend’s breathing only got more choked and desperate as the pain waged war on his body. The rhythm was all off, erratic, shuddering, and that made Pete nervous. Patrick had always had an unstoppable even rhythm. The way he breathed, the way he chewed, the way he  _kissed,_ all of it with a steady beat. His friend did everything in even, methodical time without even realizing. Even when he yelled at Pete, there was evenly distanced pauses between the barbs. It was how he was, how he had always been. There was none of Patrick’s rhythm in this. None of his flow. None of  _his_ Patrick.

He accidentally tripped over a small pile of rubble as he slowly made his way forward, and Patrick turned to look directly at Pete. The horrifying part was, Patrick didn’t even seem to see him with bright yellow eyes Pete knew had never belonged to his singer. And Pete didn’t know how to take that. He knew the other man was in unimaginable pain, but pain didn’t do  _that_ to people. Pain didn’t possess people like this. Especially not Patrick. Patrick with the unbreakable heart and the unconquerable soul and the blue, blue,  **blue**  eyes. It was more than unsettling. It made him wonder if his friend was in there at all.

But the stuttering rise and fall of the other man’s chest jarred Pete from where he was losing himself inside his head. Pete knew then that it didn’t matter if Patrick wasn’t the same, if he was broken up and scarred on the inside. It didn’t matter if Patrick’s eyes and Patrick’s rhythm were gone, didn’t matter if Patrick’s heart was in pieces or his mind was shattered. All that mattered was Patrick’s breathing was terrified and agonized, the fear of death present in every shaky exhale. The man he loved was in there somewhere and he would do whatever it took to reach him.

Patrick was hurting, Pete had the chance to do something, and that was the only thing Pete cared about. He wouldn’t let his friend face this insurmountable wall of pain and suffering alone. Not again. Never again.

Patrick had saved Pete’s life ten years ago. Pete could still remember it like it was yesterday, a car door yanked open in a panic, blue pills falling from ice-cold hands. He could still feel Patrick’s hands on his shoulders, trying to shake the life back into him, could taste the slurred  _I’m sorry_ that fell from his lips.

Pete knew he would’ve died that night if Patrick hadn’t been there. Patrick was his saving grace when he was hurting. Every time he was hurting. Someone had to be to Patrick what Patrick was to Pete. Maybe it was finally time to return the favor he never thought he’d have the chance to repay.

All Patrick could hear was the heavy bass notes that reminded him distantly of a man with bright brown eyes and an easy smile. He was beginning to lose track of where that image was coming from, who the man was, and why the memory felt safe and warm when the feeling that crawled on his skin was anything but. He never wanted to hear the noise again, wanted the man to leave him to stew in his misery alone. As the heat began flowing deep under his skin and the noise faded away, he couldn’t help but be grateful for the silence, even as it brought pain with it. Every nerve, every vein, lung, heart, brain, all taken by the fire. He didn’t even have enough time to fight (as if he had the strength to) before it took over.

“You will kill them,” the voice assured him. He didn’t have the time to search for the strength to disagree before a massive electrical shock lit up his body, almost as if the voice could sense his impending disobedience. The pain no longer disguised itself as something else, fire or ice or nausea. Didn’t pretend to be anything other than the live wire it was.

Patrick wasn’t really sure why or how he was still alive. Surely his body had enough of this constant agony by now, surely the feeling that he was half an inch from sure death wasn’t something he was making up in his head. Why did he insist on living through this? Why couldn’t he be allowed to give up?

He had stopped checking the direct current and evil meters long ago, mostly because he was afraid of what they would tell him. Afraid both that they might tell him he was doomed to die and that they wouldn’t. The jolt was rebounding through his entire body now, bouncing off every edge and every bend. Patrick had been introduced to a variety of new horrors these past few days, but this was worse than all of them. Worse than losing his hand, worse than being dissected, bad enough that when he spoke he could no longer recognize his wrecked voice.

“Turn it off.” It was a low growl in his throat, different than the choked whispers he usually let out during bouts of rage and pain.  _“Turn it off_ _!”_  It sounded like it came from a monster’s mouth, Patrick couldn’t even recognize the noise as his own, like it came from a place that didn’t exist in his body. Everything else was dead silent, it was just Patrick and the pain and the music and the color red. His own voice came through, trembling with terror and exhaustion.

“Please.”

He didn’t know who he was talking to or what he was asking for, but he was desperate to prove that voice wasn’t his, and moreover that he was still in there somewhere. That the anger hadn’t swallowed him whole. His plea was followed by several heavy shocks that left him gasping and seeing spots behind his eyes. Blood poured from the places in his palm that he dug his nails into way too hard.

Yes, the answer to a massive wall of pain was  _more_ pain. Good work, Patrick.

“Kill them.” That was when he noticed something horrible. Even though he didn’t feel it, even though it wasn’t words he was trying to say, it was his voice demanding he unleash homicidal vengeance on his best friends. The realization brought a huge wave of cold guilt with it, drowning him in hypothermic reality. His stomach turned to water. His best friends, who he loved like brothers… kill them?

He couldn’t.

He couldn’t fucking do it.

If he didn’t have them, if he didn’t have Fall Out Boy, he wouldn’t have anything. None of them would. Pete would be dead, Joe never would’ve broken out of his timid shell, Patrick would’ve been a miserable nobody, and Andy… honestly, Andy would probably be fine. Nobody could adjust to a bad situation like Andy, and Patrick was pretty sure that while Andy enjoyed their company, he didn’t  _need_ it. He didn’t need anyone but himself.

Patrick, though, he was nothing without them. He could never hurt them.

But he knew he wouldn’t have a choice. This whole mess was already far beyond his control.

“I’m sorry, Joe.” He muttered under his breath, pushing through the difficulty of speaking. This could be his only chance to apologize for what he would end up doing. For the inescapable certainty that he would soon be attempting to murder his friends. He took a deep, labored breath and try to put the syllables together to create the other two names. “Ah… Ahn…” but the control was already quickly seeping out of him, bleeding out in awful gushes in the same way his sanity was.

That was when someone peeled his fingers away from his palm. He couldn’t even see anymore, images blended and bled into each other, and Patrick couldn’t comprehend why anyone here would possibly care if he hurt himself just a little bit more than they intended him to be hurt.

“Y’know, Trick, I gotta say it’s pretty impressive you can take being a prisoner hooked up to some whack ass electroshock bullshit and make it even  _more_ depressing.” He recognized the voice, was sure he knew the cocky asshole who made that comment at a time like this. Patrick did his best to maneuver his lips in the right way to get the name out.

“Pete?” He groaned out, voice fucked and nearly silent from the hours upon hours of screaming.

“Tu es beau, mon petit chou.” Pete replied in that same bright, calming voice that had been his solace as the bass notes had turned from a pleasant memory to a horrible agony. Patrick wanted to smile, to laugh, but his lungs felt frozen in his chest. “It’s me, buddy. Now, how do we get you out of this mess?”

“I don't know,” Patrick gasped, searching for Pete’s shape through the blur of pain and confusion. But what he found, when he was finally able to discern who was speaking to him, wasn’t Pete but Mismatch… Alpha? His constant tormentor and occasional ally. Patrick started trying to push himself away in a dull panic, feeling like he was dragging his missing hand along broken glass as the movements wouldn’t translate from his brain to his body.

“Hold still for me, Trick, we don’t have much time.” And they had started calling him Trick too, but it was mocking, the name hurt when they said it, and this was different. This felt like coming home, like a warm hug and protection after this endless ordeal. It  _had_ to be Pete, right? Even if the shape was wrong and the voice wasn’t entirely his, Trick was one of the many things that would make Patrick want to wring the person’s neck if they were anyone but Pete. He wanted more than anything to be right about this, needed his friend to get him the fuck out of here. But he couldn’t ignore the fact that his brain couldn’t be trusted anymore, not after the hell it had been put through, and it could just as easily be resorting to its pathetic need to protect itself. Doing what it had to in order to survive when all Patrick wanted to do was give in.

Something was forced onto where his hand should have been, and he screamed. Startled by the sudden onslaught and unable to make himself go somewhere else, he had to concede that it couldn’t be Pete. Pete wouldn’t do this to him. Pete would never do something that hurt this bad. The severed end of his arm was far from healed and he wanted to beg them to stop touching it, please.

“No, Pete,” he slurred out, knowing it was pointless to beg Alpha for anything but there was a chance imaginary Pete would listen to him. “Stop, please stop,” he pleaded, the individual syllables turning to liquid and running right into each other. He was finally starting to be able to move again, and he writhed jerkily in the chair, brain gone stupid and confused from the rage and the agony. He wondered if Pete could even understand him. If Pete was even there.

“Shush. I’m almost done. Stop squirming.” He couldn’t help it, he had to get away, get away even if it was Pete, because he couldn’t take any more of this.

“Ohgodthathurts,” it all came out as one word, rushed, pained.

“I’m so sorry, bud.” And maybe it was Pete, the apology coming out like a reverent prayer. She never spoke to him like that. His arm gave a small pop and then the sharp pain receded. A hand ran softly through his sweat-matted hair, almost a reward for his obedience. Then he heard a tiny whiz past his ear and the person touching him plummeted to the ground.  

“You’ll kill them soon,” the ugly part of him reminded as the image of Pete sprawled out on the floor shifted in and out with Alpha’s. His brain couldn't make sense of this anymore, insisted that he had to believe it was his friend but knowing salvation was more of a desperate dream than a conceivable reality. Pete could easily be caught by surprise, and he didn’t think there had been a single moment in her life in which Alpha hadn’t been 100% prepared for every possible outcome. Then, the pain melted away, but the fury and the voice and the monster within him persisted. It wasn’t until the music was shut off that he felt the rage leave.

And that’s when he knew it was linked to the music. It was the thing he loved most that would turn him against his friends. He had to comfort himself with the idea he had imagined it all, brain gone delirious and irrational with the pain, inventing the wild anger magic to distract him from the meaningless torture. Suddenly, Patrick’s consciousness dropped out from underneath him. He couldn’t help but be thankful as the darkness embraced him. Being awake was not what he needed.

••••

The sirens were off. A good sign, hopefully. They were a sign of danger, after all. And our heroes were finally leaving the building. Another good sign.

A good sign until you find out the reason why. The rogue Pete Wentz had been recaptured and the Vixens were not taking kindly to his willingness to murder one of their own in cold blood. Perhaps they had underestimated this particular insurgent. It wouldn’t happen again. He was shot down easily with a dart to the neck. Strong-willed and weak-minded alike fell to that drug.

He was now leaving with the other Defenders, tied up with hoods over their heads, and Patrick Stump was a ticking time bomb disguised as a helpless and traumatized captive. The Herald observed the situation from behind a curtain of trees in pure shock. He was so sure the rebels would win. They gave it everything they had, and it somehow still wasn’t enough.

Was it even possible for good to still come out on top?

He didn’t know. What he did know was that the Defenders were being loaded into a truck full of kerosene and instruments, and their captors could not have benevolent intentions. Normally, the Herald wouldn’t care. He had his own freedom, why should it be any concern of his what his kidnappers did with their four remaining victims?

Except, Pete had risked everything to save his life. To save someone he didn’t even know. The Herald knew something had to be done. And he was the only one left who could still do it.

 

 


	4. My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They can't abandon their mission, and neither can you. Besides, at this point, would you even believe me if I told you things were looking up?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up horribly, horribly long, so two chapters it is! Enjoy part one, the second part will be up tomorrow.

It was a quiet night. Peaceful, almost. Serene. You’d be forgiven for mistaking it as such. Perhaps you could even pretend the sound of gasoline trickling through the wood was the soft pitter-patter of rain.

It’d be understandable, too, if you were reaching so far for a bit of hope. Who could blame you? These days, hope is hard to come by.

The dark, stoic man took a few steps back and dropped a lit match into the pile, igniting it spectacularly as a rare, crooked grin split his face. Not much could make him happy, most of what he felt was rage and the occasional bout of twisted satisfaction. But this, taking self-assured arrogant do-gooders and bringing them to their knees, destroying the things they were proud of and grinding them down to dust… this did put a smile on his face.

It was time for the Problem Solver to extinguish the remaining embers of the once-burning passion that Fall Out Boy prided themselves on.

And where were our heroes as their memories and accomplishments fell to the raging blaze, you ask? Well, what kind of tragedy would this be if they weren’t blinded and bound in the back of a van? Not a very tragic tragedy that would be. I warned you, you know. I warned you it only gets worse. I told you to leave your hope at the door if you wanted to survive this. You made a vow. If they can’t abandon their mission, neither can you.

Besides, at this point, would you even believe me if I told you things were looking up?

Patrick desperately missed seat belts. And agency to move. And light. And his fucking hand. Couldn’t even take this opportunity to be grateful to be back with his friends because he had spent the last 30 minutes bouncing around the back of the van like a god damn superball. Not to mention, it wasn’t as if being reunited would bring anything more than a fresh brand of misery. It was only a matter of time.

Optimism was a far-away memory, and Patrick was beginning to lose track of why he ever thought it was a useful tool. Believing in the good in the world would only leave him disappointed and vulnerable. Cynicism was one of the few things he had left to protect himself. He couldn’t be taken by surprise anymore if he always expected the worst possible outcome.

Patrick was reminded suddenly of the words Alpha hissed in his face before she ran out the door. _All that matters is you live through this. You live through this, and maybe you have a chance, but you’re going to lose this fight._ She was right, as she had been more times than he was willing to admit. Denial had no place in this new reality. He had to accept that this was his life now, pain and struggle and fear. Had to accept he was hardly a person anymore, just skin holding together the bones and guts they left him with. Accept it, and maybe you survive. Come to grips with it, and maybe you can still save them.

He wouldn’t be left alone in the darkened van for much longer, he knew. They’d never leave him to stew in his misery when they could be actively contributing to it. He didn’t have long, so he had to do his best with what he had while he still had it. Sure, the pain pulsing in his ears was louder than any coherent thought he could piece together and he was sure that his erratic breathing was sending bone shards outward to escape through his chest. But he could still breathe. Was still able to access limited movement.

Patrick knew it was too late for him. Pete, Joe, and Andy, though. They still had a chance.

He poked the person to his right with his elbow, knowing already by the smell and the way he was breathing like a hand was closing around his throat that it was Pete. “Are—” Patrick paused to clear his gravelly throat. “Are we all here?”

“Mhm,” was Joe’s near-silent reply.

“I guess,” Andy added, sounding unconvinced of his own existence.

“Okay, well, alive is a step in the right direction,” Patrick said.

“Alive is one word for this,” Pete muttered bitterly. Patrick did his very best to banish the angry voice in his head that screamed Pete had no right to complain when he still had both his hands and all his organs and could still recognize his scarred mind as his own. Not when all those luxuries had already been taken away from Patrick.

“Can you guys see?” Patrick asked.

“What do you think?” Joe bit back with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“Okay Joseph, if you tried, do you think you could get your hood off?” Joe let out a small groan of annoyance and Patrick rolled his eyes. “Don’t pretend it isn’t driving you crazy to not have an inch of control right now.” A sigh was let out into the silence that said Patrick was right. Several minutes of rustling, fumbling, and careful maneuvering later, Joe was able to remove everyone’s hoods and Patrick allowed himself a moment of blind, stupid hope. Not hope that everything would turn out okay, no. That had been extinguished the moment he heard his own voice haunting his head in a homicidal rage. But hope that he might be able to speak to his friends one last time before they all met their inevitable doom.

Then he began taking stock of his surroundings. They were shut inside a metal box with locks on the doors, hands tied in front of them and feet bound. Patrick tried and failed to resist the morbid curiosity that urged him to glance at his mutilated arm and was shocked to find not a bloody stump but a… a hook?

That was a new one.

A vague memory kicked at the back of his mind, the images of Pete and Mismatch shifting in and out with each other and a horrible sickening pain in his arm. Could this have been Pete’s work? Patrick glanced over to his best friend to pose the question and found him _drenched_ in blood. The disbelief made him shut his mouth before he could ask, and hopelessly prayed it wasn’t Pete’s blood.

Patrick wanted to ask, needed to know if Pete was going to bleed out on them, but knew if that was the case, Pete would probably look a lot more concerned, and it was better not to poke the bear that was his friend at the moment. The more you pestered Pete about something, the more he shut you down and the less likely he was to ever confess the truth.

The uncomfortable pressing silence slammed down on Patrick’s chest and he willed anyone to break it, anyone but him. As he fixed his eyes to his lap, he could feel them all staring at him. He could feel the burning question they were fighting to keep out of their throats. But Patrick wasn’t a piece of glass, if these last few days had proven anything, they had proven that. And he wouldn’t stand for them treating him like he was fragile, like they had to be careful with him.

“Someone ask before my head explodes,” Patrick demanded hoarsely, ignoring the ache that settled in his ribs whenever he forced words out. His bandmates looked at each other like they were sending one of their own to the gallows, drawing mental straws to see who would be subjected to the task.

“Are you okay?” Joe asked. He was covered in food, egg on his face, tomato in his hair, banana on his shirt. The time would come for Joe to explain what had happened to him while Patrick was being brainwashed, but that time was not now. Patrick glanced surreptitiously at Andy to see if he, too, was covered in proof of the horrors he had escaped. But all Patrick could see was a horrible, vacant look in his eyes. Anything short of total laser focus was extremely out of character for Andy, and Patrick ignored the growing list of horrifying reasons his mind was inventing as to how Andy could’ve ended up with such a shattered look on his face.

“No,” Patrick answered honestly. “I’ll survive,” _and you won’t,_ his mind added.

“What happened to you?” Pete interjected, and Patrick sighed. He knew it was what everyone wanted to find out, knew in his heart he had to tell them if he wanted to keep them safe, but wanting with every bit of his brain that was still his to command to find a way around it. Patrick forced himself to look at his bassist and found Pete unwilling to meet his eyes.

“Um,” Patrick started, not sure where or how to begin.

“You don’t have to tell us,” Pete reminded him.

“I do, actually. The three of you know as well as I do that as much as you’d like to deny it, these people have done things to us that have drawn lines between us, made it so we aren’t sure how to relate to each other anymore, made us feel like strangers to each other when we’re supposed to be best friends. They hurt us, made us feel like we’ve lost sight of ourselves. And I think that this pain, these secrets, they’re forcing us to put walls up around ourselves to prevent each other from getting too close. We need to be one united front if we’re going to beat this. We have to break those walls down. The only way to get rid of those rifts, those walls, is to talk about it. I’m more than willing to sacrifice being comfortably removed from this situation if it means keeping you guys safe.”

“You’ve…” Pete started, sounding suddenly, desperately angry. “You’ve made too many sacrifices already, Patrick.” Patrick glanced at the hook that masked his deformity and thought to himself, _you have no idea._

“We’re all still alive, Pete. That’s what counts.” _For now._

And with that, Patrick launched himself into a vague retelling of the hell that had been constructed for him. He couldn’t say for sure what the worst part of it was, if it was Andy realizing he had been forced to abandon his beliefs or the way Pete’s expression fell through the floor in an unexplainable way when he confessed he wasn’t sure any of his memories from the table were real. Couldn’t tell if the pain of the truth was worse than how filthy he felt when he lied to them about the chapel, the machines, what the voice told him.

He tried to distract himself from the obvious pity and horror in Joe and Pete’s eyes by looking at Andy, Andy who never pitied anyone, and was shocked to see the sickened look in his friend’s eyes. Cool-headed, never-phased Andy looked about ready to lose his lunch at hearing what had happened to Patrick, and that’s when Patrick knew this was truly as bad as it had felt. Andy didn’t _do_ this, didn’t look at people with such defeat and horror and guilt. Patrick didn’t know what to do with it, and was grateful when at last, he stumbled his way to the only possible bright side to this whole mess.

“But there’s one of them that I think is on the ropes about the whole thing. She was there when my… when I lost my hand, she was there at the table, she was in the chapel, and she’s not into it like the rest of them are. I don’t think she takes any pleasure in hurting me.” Pete scoffed and Patrick turned to look at him. “What?”

“What do you mean, what? You know what you’re doing, Trick. You’re smart. You must know.” Patrick motioned with his bound arms for Pete to get to the point. “You’re doing your classic Patrick Stump ‘everybody deserves a second and third and fourth chance’ bit. I could tell you right now what side this lady is on.”

“It’s not that simple, Pete.”

“Yeah, it is. You’re the one who’s making it complicated. Your **hand** was delivered to me on my doorstep because of that woman. Tell me what exactly she’s done to counteract something like that. Tell me what amazing thing she did that made you willing to forgive everything else she’s done to you.” Patrick opened his mouth and then shut it again because fuck it, what was he supposed to tell Pete? It was the look in her eyes? It was the fact she passed up the opportunity to be slightly more horrible to him? “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Listen, Trick, I know you can’t. I know you won’t judge people on their worst mistakes. And usually, that’s great. That’s a great quality of yours, I’m so thankful that you’re so understanding and kind. But I wish you would just stop being so insufferably good for one fucking minute and realize some people are not worth your forgiveness.”

Patrick tried to ignore how much Pete’s words genuinely hurt him. He knew he had a tendency to be a little more lenient with his judgment of people than he should be, but to hear Pete take him apart for it, to hear such anger and frustration from his best friend, it stung in a way he didn’t want to admit to. He told himself that Pete just didn’t understand. Pete was trying to protect him. Pete didn’t know how hopeless this situation was, didn’t understand the groundbreaking importance of having even a single ally to rely on.

“Listen to me. Please. You haven’t seen her. You don’t know. We need someone on our side. She could be our ticket out of here. I think her name is Alpha, and I think she’s our only shot to leave this place alive.”

“Trick, I don’t care what her name is and neither should you. We can’t trust these people, they’re sociopaths. They’re nutcases. You aren’t in a solid place mentally, of course, you aren’t, we don’t expect you to be. But you’re not in the right headspace to be making judgments about this woman. Cause I know you feel bad for her, you think you can help her, and that’s batshit crazy, Trick.” Pete’s intense brown eyes bore holes through him as he tried to find a way to deflect these words that were making _him_ sound more insane and unreliable by the second.

“I don’t know, Pete. I don’t know what to think.” Pete rolled his eyes and sighed.

“You’re such a liar, Patrick. A bad liar, you always have been.” His stomach roiled as he imagined a hundred ways this could go wrong, thought about Pete revealing the truth about what went down in the chapel if Patrick was remembering right and his friend had been there before the black had swallowed him whole. If Pete could see through this lie, who’s to say he didn’t see right through every dirty secret Patrick had tried to keep from them since he began his story? “You feel bad for that chick, and now you can’t get yourself to hate her. Even though she’s done unspeakably horrible things to you, even though you have every imaginable right to hate her, you can’t do it. So you won’t fight her, not the way you should, not the way you have to if we’re gonna win this war. You’re too fucking nice, Trick. I keep telling you that’s going to get you in trouble someday.”

God, Patrick hated when Pete was right. Hated these moments when he felt so exposed under Pete’s eyes, like an open book for him to read. He had never been able to hide from Pete. Not when he was a kid, not when they were barely acquaintances, and not even now when both of their lives depended upon it.

“We don’t need to hate her, Pete, trust me.”

“I don’t know if I can, Trick. She isn’t like us, she doesn’t think like we do. Even if you’re right, even if she isn’t as god-awful as the rest of them are, when it comes down to it, you really think she’ll turn on them for the sake of a bunch of people she’s never met?”

“I don’t think you understand.”

“Obviously!”

“I’m not trying to piss you off, okay? This isn’t about you, and it isn’t about me. This isn’t about your trust issues and my too-much-trust issues, this is about finding a way out of here alive, and she is our best bet right now. If you have another solution, I would absolutely love to hear it, but until you come up with one, I don’t see any other avenues we can take other than this one.

“I don’t expect you to understand why I can see good in her, but I do expect that as my best friend you’d be willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. When you’re alone and you’re going through something that bad, anytime you see any sort of opening, you want to grab ahold of it. I hadn’t seen any of you since I had been taken, not really, and all of it was so bad. It was so much fear and so much hurt and hostility and danger and then she was not quite so bad as the rest of it. When things are that bad, less bad might as well be great. I didn’t have you, didn’t have _any_ of you, and I was losing my mind. I needed something to get me through. She was my something.

“I’m not saying I know anything for sure. But we can’t be picky with our solutions right now. I could be totally wrong. This could be a massive mistake, could all be part of their plan, she appears to be heading up this mission to destroy us so it’s more than possible I’m imagining all of it. But on the off chance that I’m not, on the off chance she could save us, I don’t think we can blow this off.” Pete’s stare softened and fear edged into his voice when he responded.

“I hate this.”

“Which part?”

“All of it. I hate what they put you through. I hate that we’re no closer to getting out of here. I hate that you won’t be honest with me about how you’re feeling, cause you must think I’m a blind idiot if you expect me to believe none of this affected you. I hate that they used you to hurt us. I hate that there’s nothing I can do to fix any of it.” He paused and pressed the heels of his palms hard into his eyes, taking another shaking breath. “And I fucking hate that I’m struggling with this when I have no right to make it about me. When anything done to us can’t possibly compare to the hell they put you through. When you’re the one who has every right to completely lose it.”

“Do you think I’m not losing it?”

“I think you had a lot of chances to give us up and you never did, and the very least I could do is keep it together for your sake, and I’m not even capable of that.” Patrick opened his mouth to respond, but Pete wasn’t done, words speeding up as the frantic guilt shattered the syllables like a pane of glass. “Why didn’t you give us up? You had the chance to make it stop, we all would’ve understood. I don’t get why you think it’s fine to throw yourself under the knife for us but you refuse to let us do the same for you. We want to protect you too, Patrick.”

“Pete, please, listen to me!” Time skidded to a stop as every pair of eyes in the van fell on him, his voice strained near a shout. “Listen to me, okay? This isn’t just about you and your guilt and your regrets. You know me, use your damn brain! Do you think I really would’ve felt better if they left me alone so I could obsess over how I let you down and handed you over to our enemies? So I could run my mind over the way I betrayed my closest friends? If they had relented the only thing that would’ve changed is I’d lose my mind over being too weak to protect the only thing that was still in my control, it wouldn’t have made anything better. Besides, it isn’t like they would’ve stopped. It didn’t matter what I said or what I agreed to. They have a mission, they were just fucking with me. And you would’ve done the same thing, so don’t act like I’m so damn special for making the decision all of you would’ve made in my position.” Pete let out a heavy sigh.

“I’m just so sorry it had to be you, Trick.” Patrick leaned his head against the metal wall behind him as apologies poured from his friends’ mouths, staring blankly above Joe and Andy’s heads.

“We’re all sorry, Patrick,” Andy added.

“Uh huh,” Joe agreed. Their voices were scratchy and gruff from what Patrick could only assume was a fair amount of screaming in the hell they came from. Patrick prayed this conversation didn’t turn into a shouting match, for that reason and many others.

Not overly eager to wallow in self-pity, Patrick searched for a way to change the topic. “Pete, were you in that room with me?”

“Hm?”

“The chapel where they were… where I was up until now, were you there? I thought I might’ve seen you.” _In a pain-induced hallucination where you may or may not have appeared as the woman you hate so fucking much._

“Uh, yeah, I was.” Patrick’s brain only half-registered the implications behind that statement. Pete was in a room he was not supposed to be in while under the watch of people who do horrible things to you when you don’t act in accordance with their plans. Which meant Pete might have had to make countless selfless and dangerous decisions just to get to a point where he might be able to help Patrick. He couldn’t help but wonder what it was in Pete’s mind that felt trying so hard to get all of them out of this mess wasn’t enough to warrant forgiving himself for his perceived shortcomings.

“Speaking of the chapel,” Pete continued. “What was with that whole yellow eyes exorcist monster vibe you had going on, buddy?” Oh. Oh, no.

“Huh?” Joe mumbled.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patrick lied, hoping they’d all buy it. He needed them to buy it.

“You sure?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Pete. In case you didn’t notice, I wasn’t in the best shape to be totally aware of what was happening. Round the clock torture can do that to a person.”

“Alright, Trick, alright, just calm down,” Pete said, eyes wide and unconsciously pushing himself the few inches he could away from his friend. Blind, irrational rage swept Patrick up with it.

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Pete! You are the fucking definition of agitation at all times!”

“Patrick.” Pete sounded wounded. Patrick couldn’t find it in himself to care. He looked at Pete hard.

“Don’t ‘Patrick’ me.” He warned, voice unrecognizable even to himself. It was too cold, too hard to be his own. The rage boiled in his veins at Pete’s hypocrisy. _Hypocrisy?_ His conscience echoed back at him. _Like you aren’t the biggest hypocrite walking this earth. He’s doing his best and you’re lying right to his face, but yeah, screw him, right_ _?_ Only then did he slow down enough to notice the wide look in Pete’s eyes, and a soft part of him broke apart when he realized Pete was afraid.

“Okay, Trick,” Pete replied, swallowing hard. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Patrick knew it was his fault but couldn’t find it in his hardened heart to apologize.

“Right, okay.” Patrick deflected, trying again to change the subject. “Anyone know what’s up with this thing?” He gestured to the hook on his hand. “It definitely wasn’t here the last time I checked.” Pete somehow managed to look sheepish and proud of himself at the same time.

“That was me.” He admitted.

“Why?”

“Why? Isn’t it obvious?”

“What’s obvious about it? Why did you do it, Pete? You want me to be your secret weapon? You wanna take advantage of my broken fuckin’ mind and use it to take down your enemies? Cause I’m getting sick and tired of that being the bright fucking idea today.”

“That’s the bright idea today? What does that mean?” An uncomfortable silence descended upon the van as the cold realization crawled down Patrick’s spine, that he had finally said too much and backpedaling couldn’t solve this one.

“Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. My head’s pretty messed up right now, I don’t think my mouth and my brain are totally on the same page.” Patrick knew he should tell them, but he knew the look it would put on their faces, the fear it would put in their hearts, and he couldn’t face that. Couldn’t bring himself to sacrifice the precious few normal minutes he had left with them in favor of admitting the Vixen’s insane plan had actually worked and that he was broken beyond repair. Besides, it wasn’t like telling them would stop it from happening.

Nothing he put in front of the horrible truth would make it any less true, and he told himself they didn’t need to know. Ignorance truly was bliss, and he missed it like an old friend.

“Trick…” Pete started knowingly.

“Pete, I said it’s nothing, okay?” Pete brought his knees up to his chest and rested his head on them, looking at Patrick in a way that was sad and defeated and nothing Pete was supposed to be, nothing he could afford for Pete to be if they were going to stand a minute chance of surviving this day.

“I wasn’t trying to turn you into a weapon, Trick,” Pete confessed, bright brown irises weighed down with a pang of sudden guilt that Patrick felt lock around his heart. “I just… I didn’t want you to feel like you were somehow less than us because of what happened. Because none of it was your fault, it was us putting all the responsibility on you and it was my idea and you only went along with it because you’re a much better friend than I am and you’d do anything for me and that’s the reason we’re all in this mess. And I just feel guilty and shitty and messed up on the inside and I thought if I could do this one thing to help a little bit maybe you wouldn’t hate me.”

And Patrick knew that was coming, but it didn’t make it sting any less to hear out loud. It would be an uphill battle to get Pete to believe he wasn’t at fault, especially when every time Patrick tried to calm down he just got himself worked up again and this whole thing was just one big argument disguised as a rational conversation. Not to mention, Patrick still had to remind himself that, in fact, this wasn’t all Pete’s fault. It was so much easier just to pile the blame on Pete, he was almost used to it considering how difficult Pete had a tendency to be. But it wasn’t fair, he knew it wasn’t, Pete didn’t have any control over Patrick’s fate and there was no way he could’ve known what would happen.

If placing too much faith in the good in the world and believing nothing bad could ever happen to Patrick were Pete’s worst sins, well, it shouldn’t be so fucking difficult to forgive those things.

“I don’t hate you, Pete, I could never hate you. You can’t blame—”

“Yes, actually, I can. You aren’t stupid, Patrick. I know what I did and so do you. The handcuffs were my decision. It was my ignorance and blind belief that put you in that position, they never would’ve taken your hand had it not been for me.”

“You can’t be so hard on yourself, Pete, you tried to save me in the chapel. You were the only shadow of hope in my world when I wanted to give up more than anything, and it’s not your—” Every emotion on Pete’s face melted into anger.

“Don’t patronize me, Patrick. Seriously, just don’t. You and I both know that this one’s on me. I put the whole mission on your shoulders and I made the case _your_ problem when we all should’ve been working together. It was me and my fucking _issues_ and you’re mad at me, I know you are, and you should be. Look me in the eye and tell me there’s not a single part of you that’s angry your hand is gone and blames me for it.” Patrick stared his friend down.

“I don’t blame you for what happened to me.”

Pete scoffed. “Liar.”

Patrick exhaled in a frustrated way. “Are you done now? Are you done with this self-pitying bullshit so we can move on?”

“Patrick!” Andy interjected, sounding horrified.

“Can it, Andy, you know what he’s doing. Get the fuck over yourself, Pete. We all acted stupid. We all did things wrong. This isn’t just about you. Maybe I am pissed at you. But I’m also pissed at myself, and I’m pissed at Joe and Andy, and I’m pissed off at the world in a way I’ve never been. But we have an enemy we’re supposed to be fighting right now, and it’s not each other. It’s those women plotting our demise. And I don’t know about you, but I’m a hell of a lot more pissed at them than I am at you.”

“Oh really? What did _you_ do that got us in this situation, Patrick? What was your fuck up?”

“…I got kidnapped,” Patrick told him weakly.

“We **all** got kidnapped, asshole,” Pete replied in a bitter way that was sharp edges and regret and scarlet anger. Patrick let his head thump against the wall behind him.

“What do you want from me, Pete? You wanna hear me say I didn’t make any decisions as selfish and half-baked as yours? Well, that’s bullshit, it’s not true. The decision I made was starting this band. We’re all as good as dead because of me. But do I wanna undo that decision? No, I fucking don’t. If we’re measuring blame, this is more my fault than any of yours. It doesn’t matter. Move on.”

“You can’t just tell me to move on and expect—”

“Don’t you _dare_ fucking tell me what I can and cannot do when it’s **my** hand that’s gone, Pete!” The shout brought pain lancing through his ribs, stitches pulling and chest aching, but the frustration pulsed hotter than the pain. What the fuck did Pete want him to say?

“Guys…” Andy broke the tense silence that had descended on them. “This isn’t helping. We’re all under a lot of stress right now. We’re all tired, we’re all scared, and we're all in pain. But the last thing we need to be doing is turning on each other, right?” Patrick took a deep, shaking breath and tried to blow this raging anger out with it. “ _Right?”_ Andy repeated. Patrick sighed.

“Right,” he replied.

“Right,” Pete agreed through clenched teeth.

“Pete,” Patrick started, but now Pete’s eyes were firmly affixed to the wall above Andy’s head and showed no intent to move. “Hey,” Patrick tried again while elbowing his friend in the ribs gently. Pete closed his eyes, took a deep breath that seemed to pain him, and slowly turned his head toward Patrick. The younger man did his best to ignore the shadow of tears in his bassist’s eyes.

“I’m so sorry, buddy. I’m _so_ sorry.” Patrick was hit with a sudden wave of compassion for his friend, and he was overwhelmingly grateful for it after all of this unexplainable anger. Mercifully, he was finally allowed to see Pete as the irreplaceable friend he truly was. Patrick knew in his heart that everyone hurt each other, and all that mattered was finding the people worth suffering for. And Patrick would go to hell and back just to see his friend smile in the bright and hopeful way that told him even if things weren’t okay, they would be soon. He would soldier his way through this mess all over again to glimpse the crinkle that came to the edges of Pete’s eyes when he threw his head back and laughed just once before everything inevitably went to shit again. If extraordinary sacrifice was what it took to keep Pete from danger, to keep him alive, Patrick was more than willing.

“It’s okay, Pete. I forgive you.” Pete leaned his head into his friend’s shoulder and turned his face into it.

“Thank you,” he whispered brokenly.

It was one less problem for Pete to worry about, his friendship with Patrick was not in immediate jeopardy, and for that, he tried to force himself to be grateful. He knew he should focus on that instead of the smaller problem that continuously bombarded his brain, but he couldn’t help it. It hadn’t been real. None of it. Patrick didn’t kiss him. Patrick didn’t love him, not in the way Pete had been dreaming of for years.

And it didn’t matter, he knew it didn’t. Patrick had told them that anything they remembered from the table was most likely a drug-induced hallucination to mask whatever had actually been happening, and that should’ve been fine. Pete should’ve been able to accept that what he saw was his brain concocting a protective shell around what was left of his sanity, but he couldn’t do it. This was too heavy of a blow, the one thing that had made him happy throughout this whole ordeal was a lie.

And really, he should’ve known better than to believe it was true. He and Patrick had been in Fall Out Boy together for over ten years. If something was going to happen between them, it would’ve happened already.

But still, things had always gotten in the way. Pete had always had some meaningless girl on his arm, Patrick had always had his obsession with learning and growing and changing. For the majority of the time they had been friends, Pete had been an absolute wreck, and it would’ve been hard for Patrick to consider being his partner when he was constantly his babysitter. There was a full year during the hiatus where they didn’t talk at all. Things were _always_ getting in the way. Patrick was the most amazing friend, but life hadn’t lent itself to them being together. Life still wasn’t lending itself to that.

But Pete had wanted so badly for it to be real that the truth had taken the last whole part of him and shattered it into broken, useless pieces, and speaking of useless, that summed up Pete’s role pretty well at this point, didn’t it?

Even if the hallucination had been real, even if he and Patrick had the chance to be something, he was a Defender of the Faith first. He was Patrick’s best friend first. He was a friend to Andy and Joe first. He was a lot of things before he was Patrick’s boyfriend or whatever they could’ve been if Pete hadn’t fucked them both up all those years ago.

Before he was a child overcome by childish thoughts, he was a warrior. He was a fighter, and his friends needed him to be strong. He couldn’t let this get the best of him. Because right now, he was a liability. He was useless, he was a problem, and his friends didn’t have time to babysit him and his _issues_ right now.

It didn’t matter. Whatever he and Patrick were or could’ve been didn’t matter and could be dealt with after they all get out of here alive. He told himself to get it together, to stop acting like a moron, to stop being the worst version of himself he could possibly invent. Being that guy was going to get them all killed. He had to be what his friends needed right now.

Patrick had a knack for always being what Pete needed. He was what Pete needed in a Best Buy parking lot ten years ago when Pete had finally fucked his life up beyond repair. When Pete could feel the life draining out of his body and he realized what a terrible mistake he had made, Patrick was there in his beat-up Ford shaking the feeling back into him and folding him into his arms. And he forgave Pete for doing that to him, forgave Pete for everything he had ever done to him.

Pete knew he was fucked up in innumerable ways. He could never articulate his feelings or make up his mind, he hid his emotions with jokes and lied uncontrollably and wasn’t sure if he’d ever said ‘I love you’ to a girl and meant it. Pete could still remember the taste of Patrick’s lips and could fill whole books with the list of all the things that he had done wrong that night, knew as he did it that it was wrong but did it anyway because he _wanted_ to. _Wanted_ to see how far he could push Patrick before his friend broke.

And that’s not what you do to your fucking friends, kiss them and use them and lie to them and manipulate them and scare them, but Patrick still stuck around.

And Pete knew he didn’t deserve Patrick in his life, knew Patrick deserved a better best friend than him and if he wanted to, could easily find one. Patrick was as close to perfect as a person could get, and you’d have to be insane not to love him. Pete didn’t know why Patrick had chosen him when he was 16, didn’t know why Patrick chose him again every time Pete did something stupid that should’ve made Patrick walk away for good. Pete knew he was hard to care about, was very aware of how many times Patrick must have had to decide to stay friends with him.

Pete wished there were words to tell him how grateful he was.

But instead, he was going to yell at him and refuse to understand his point of view. Because nothing says ‘thank you for saving my life and being better than I could ever possibly be worth’ like fighting tooth and nail over things that didn’t even fucking matter.

Pete knew his bipolar and his anxiety were butting heads for which would be allowed to wreak havoc on his life, knew he was being difficult to deal with, and lamented the fact that he couldn’t do anything more than stand by helpless as his friends were left to pick up his pieces. Pieces of anger and self-loathing and guilt and horrible crushing depression. Just like always.

He wished he could be okay, wished he could be useful, but more than anything he wished he could lay down with his head on Patrick’s stomach and stop pretending like they used to do every night when they were young and Pete was sad almost all the time and Patrick had an unquenchable savior complex. He wanted to feel the gentle rise and fall of Patrick’s breath instead of worrying he was going to keel over and die on them at any moment. Because in those moments with Patrick, nothing ever seemed as bad as it really was. Because he had Patrick, who in all honesty _was_ his savior, and nothing could destroy him while he had Patrick.

But instead of feeling bulletproof and untouchable, he was panicked and paranoid because things were worse than his friend was letting on. Patrick was hurt, in mental and physical agony even if he refused to admit it. Not to mention, all signs pointed to it all getting worse. Pete knew Patrick, knew that Patrick’s mind was gone worrying about the future, knew that Patrick was keeping something from them. Something big. Trying to protect them, like he always did. Pete didn’t know how to make Patrick understand that he didn’t need to throw himself on every grenade so that they could be okay. He didn’t know how to get Patrick to let them hurt for him too. Pete was more than willing. He knew Joe and Andy were too.

Pete was still haunted by the look in Patrick’s eyes in the chapel. Those were not his friend’s eyes. Those eyes were hate and rage and anger, and he had never known Patrick to call those emotions his own for more than a few minutes at a time. Things like hatred didn’t take Patrick over that way. There was no room in Patrick’s overlarge heart to truly hate like he saw in those eyes. There was something inside Patrick now that didn’t belong to him. And that was _fine,_ Pete didn’t mind that Patrick was scrambled-up eggs in the head, Pete had been that way his whole life. But he wished his friend would just tell him the _truth,_ so they could fight this thing together. They could beat it together. But Patrick wouldn’t talk to him.

Evil was coming at them from every direction. He couldn’t fight a war with his best friend on top of it all.

His friend who, despite everything, was still trying to lead them in the idea of an uphill fighting revolution with their only possible ally leading the charge against them. A mission he still believed possible despite knowing better than anyone what their captors were capable of.

Pete was torn on whether he should be impressed or pissed off. Patrick wouldn’t tell them the truth, but he still expected them to follow him. At the same time, Patrick had been through hell and was still selflessly trying to save them and the mission rather than himself.

Pete was jolted suddenly from his reverie by whooping and shouting from outside the van, followed by a deafening crash. “Burn, baby, burn!” Someone shouted close to Pete’s ear, nothing but a thin sheet of metal between him and the voice. And with a paralyzing new wave of guilt, Pete knew exactly what was happening. He remembered what Patrick had told them about the women’s mission. _These people hate music. They think it’s the evil that’s destroying the world, and somehow we’re leading this destructive charge. They think if they take us apart, they’ll ‘Silence the Noise’._ They were setting fire to Fall Out Boy’s metaphorical legacy, just as they intended to mutilate their minds, bodies, and influence on the world.

“Are they burning our stuff?” Pete asked in a shaky voice, feeling unexplainably guilty that he hadn’t told them he had known this would happen. Telling them wouldn’t have changed anything, but he still took away their choice to know the truth before it was forced upon them. Patrick laughed in a wheezing way that sounded like it hurt.

“If they’ve got Evening Out, I vote we let them burn it,” Patrick said.

“You’re hilarious, Trick.”

“I agree with Patrick…” Joe paused for dramatic effect. “Stump.”

“Joe,” Patrick warned. “I know the joke you’re trying to make, and if you like living your life free of stab wounds, I recommend you don’t elaborate.” Joe looked a little sheepish as he tried to stop himself from laughing.

“Well…” he started, then had to pause to control his giggling. “It’s just that you’re literally Patrick,” he motioned to what was left of Patrick’s left hand, “ _Stump.”_ Pete kicked at Joe’s foot from across the van.

“That was my fucking joke, asshole!” He told Joe. “I was saving that for the right moment, you jerk!” Patrick glanced between each of them in disbelief.

“Are you two for real right now?”

“C’mon Trick, it’s an A-tier pun,” Pete told him, stifling his own laughter.

“I have a razor-sharp hook where my hand used to be, and you guys really wanna test me right now?” But Patrick was laughing too, for the first time in what felt like years, and Pete was hit with an urgent wave of gratitude for Patrick’s infallible resilience. It was amazing that he could bounce back after everything that happened, everything he had to tell them and relive all over again. Patrick was amazing. Pete smiled and pretended this life of pain and fear and misery was not his own, and wondered more often than Patrick could possibly know what exactly he, Joe, and Andy had done to deserve someone like Patrick.

Pete turned his head and leaned into Patrick, taking a deep breath in and finding the familiar scent of his best friend buried beneath the blood, sweat, leather, and fear. Pete heard his own voice echo in his head, an interview he had done years ago. A lifetime ago. In a different life, a different world with problems that seemed so insignificant now. A different universe, but the same amazing kid to call his best friend. _Me and Patrick can finish each other’s sentences. This is what makes it so funny when people ask us if we care that you think one of us is hotter or cooler, or who writes what or stands where in photos. We don’t care. That kid is my best friend, and the rest of the world could blow up, and Fall Out Boy could break up, and he still will be._

And for a sudden, blind moment all Pete could feel was joy. Patrick was still here, even if he wasn’t the same, he was still alive, he was still breathing and existing under Pete’s body and lighting up the room with his bulletproof passion and drive. Patrick and Pete both still lived in a world where they were alive and together and sane enough to appreciate it. Even as everything was quite literally burning down around them, they still had that, and even if their days were numbered, in this second Pete had Patrick and that was all that mattered.

Then guilt crashed down around the joy and Pete felt his lungs shrivel up with grief. Why was this happening to _Patrick?_ Why not Pete instead? Karma should have already come for Pete a long time ago but Patrick was _innocent._ Patrick was **good.** Patrick didn’t deserve any of this. Patrick was broken and hurt and scared and still taking on all the responsibility of spurring them on to victory and survival.

It shouldn’t be Patrick’s problem, shouldn’t be his job.

None of this should be on Patrick.

And the last thing Pete wanted was for Patrick to still feel like he had to do everything alone when they were all together now. Patrick should be able to lean on them and trust them, but he had grown so used to holding the weight of the mission on his shoulders these past few days that he couldn’t handle putting it down. Pete wanted to help. But he didn’t know if he was strong enough to.


	5. My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete leaned away from Patrick now, forced himself to remove what little comfort he could still find, because murderers didn't deserve solace from the crimes they committed and Pete was no exception.

“So… what now?” Pete asked quietly.

“You.” Patrick replied simply.

“What do you mean, me?”

“I mean, I told you what happened to me. Now you tell us what happened to you. Remember? Crazy bitches drew lines in the sand that we need to erase? We need to ditch this disconnected feeling so we can fight them together? Is any of this ringing a bell, Peter?” Pete rolled his eyes and hoped Patrick couldn’t tell how forced it was.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” But Pete didn’t know where to start when he knew the ending would be ‘By the way, I killed someone in cold blood’. He didn’t want them to see him as a monster. Not when he had already known far too well for far too long that he was one. He didn’t want them to hate him like he hated himself sometimes.

 _Are you done with this self-pitying bullshit so we can move on?_ Patrick’s angry voice echoed through Pete’s anxiety-fractured skull. Anger was a strange emotion on Patrick, didn’t quite fit him right, like a shoe two sizes too small. Pete was jarred from another spiral of introspection by Patrick’s elbow in his ribs, and he wondered distantly how long he had been silent for.

“If you’re up for it, you have the floor. If you aren’t, we can circle back to you. I know this is a lot.” Patrick told him, soft and understanding and everything Pete loved about him and that only made it worse. He wanted Patrick to go back to being snarky and bitter and quick-triggered because at least he wouldn’t feel so awful letting down that version of Patrick. But this one, the one who always understood and listened and smiled like a Saturday in summer, he couldn’t handle the way he would crumble when he discovered his best friend was a murderer.

“I have to be up for it.”

“Why?”

“Because of you, Trick. Because you went through something so bad I’m shocked you could even find the words to tell us about it, let alone actually endure it. Because you’re still here, after all of that, still trying to help the rest of us even though you have every imaginable right to hate us for being the reason you got picked apart the way you did. And you’re still somehow making this all feel okay like you do and at the very least, I should be able to match your honesty, okay?” Patrick’s body tensed against Pete’s and his previously steady breathing hitched hard. Pete knew it was a small enough reaction that he shouldn’t have even noticed, but he couldn’t ignore it as he sat bolt upright and looked to his friend for an explanation. “What? What did I do?” Pete asked frantically.

“No, it’s not you.” Patrick replied in a way that clearly meant ‘drop it’, but Pete knew better. This was another entry in a long list of signs that Patrick wasn’t okay and had a secret he didn’t feel like he could share with his closest friends and only allies. Pete tried not to be angry. Told himself that after everything Patrick had been through, everything he had been willing to share, he had the right to keep something to himself. But still, it sat in his stomach, a frozen block of ice knocking against his organs. Patrick told them horrible, stomach-turning, heart-wrenching details of what happened to him and there was something even _worse_ , something so bad Patrick couldn’t bear to put words to it.

“It’s…” Patrick trailed off and looked around the van as if the words he wanted were attached to the ceiling. “It’s nothing. I’m okay.”

“Anytime you want to stop lying to my face, I’d be so down for it, Trick.”

“Pete, we’ve been over this. My brain is a little messed up, and my body is more than a little messed up. Are you planning on telling us the truth or would you rather keep projecting your insecurities on me while we turn ourselves around in circles waiting for them to come back?” His tone was hard and cold and this, this Pete could work with. Patrick with unfamiliar bright gold flecks in his eyes and anger in his voice and a shield locked around his heart was a Patrick he could hurt and not feel like a monster. Pete was a coward, there was no doubt about it. A coward who was afraid of the truth, he knew. A coward who would piss his best friend off on purpose if it would make that truth even a little easier to bear.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll tell you.” Pete leaned away from Patrick now, forced himself to remove what little comfort he could still find, because murderers didn’t deserve solace from the crimes they committed and Pete was no exception. “Do you guys remember how bad I used to be with the press?” Pete asked with a slight wince. Nothing stirred up a pot of self-loathing quite like remembering what a flighty douchebag he was. Patrick gave a grim laugh and nodded.

“Would be hard to forget.”

“Well, in the room, they had all these cameras, the girl had a camera too, and it was kind of like that. Like it felt how being mobbed by the press used to feel, that anger and frustration and existential panic. I just felt like I was drowning, and normally you guys can help me and normally something can be done to fix it but there was nothing I could do this time, I was just trapped there with her, tied up and hopeless and scared. And somehow it felt just like all those years where I couldn’t get my shit together, felt like no one would ever actually care about me and even if they did, I would fuck it up the way I did with Ashlee. I don’t know. It was really bad. Like, it shouldn’t have been, she never even touched me, let alone hurt me, but it just felt _awful._ I just felt the world crashing down around me. I don’t know.” Pete hated that he couldn’t put it into words when it seemed to be so easy for Patrick. Hated that Patrick had gone through something a thousand times worse than Pete could even imagine and wasn’t even a fraction as messed up as Pete was. Hated most of all that he himself refused to tell his friends the truth. But he _couldn’t_ do it. He couldn’t. Not if they were going to survive this in one piece.

“And?” Patrick asked. Pete faked confusion as convincingly as he could and looked at Patrick with furrowed eyebrows.

“And what?”

“What else happened in that room, Pete? You’re covered in blood, I’m going to need you to explain that. I’m really not in the mood for games right now. Spill.” Pete could feel his fragile strength ready to crumble under the pressure. Could feel his old self pounding against the walls of the prison Pete kept him in, begging to make his long-anticipated comeback. But his friends didn’t need overwhelming storms of emotion, misplaced anger, and way too much eyeliner. They needed stability. Pete closed his eyes and kept the animal within him contained. For now.

“I killed her. The girl in the room with me. That was how I escaped, and that was why those sirens went off. It was me. I… I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

The air left Patrick’s body in a sudden defeated rush and Pete cringed inwardly, knowing he was the reason and hating it. _I know, Trick. Things can’t ever be anything short of catastrophic for us._ “What?” Patrick breathed.

“You don’t understand,” Pete murmured between shaking breaths. “You don’t understand.” Pete’s frame started to heave, sending deep aches through his ribs, and Patrick’s hands were tied, Patrick couldn’t get to him, and Pete felt defenseless in a way he was becoming far too familiar with. He could feel the undertow ready to grab hold and couldn’t find any roadblocks to put in front of it because Patrick was there but he **wasn’t** and Patrick was the only thing that could get him through a full-fledged panic attack. He hadn’t had one without Patrick by his side in years, since the hiatus, and he wasn’t keen on repeating that shit show. He needed Patrick’s steady arms around his shoulders and Patrick’s hair in his face when he hugged him, needed Patrick’s heart pounding against his, even and strong and alive. And he couldn’t have any of that because they were prisoners and Pete was trapped and he _killed_ that girl who was just a baby, who was younger than him, who he didn’t even know.

“Pete, it’s okay, buddy.” Joe tried in a soothing voice that was nothing like Pete was used to from him.

“Joe, shut up, okay?”

“We aren’t mad at you, Pete.” Patrick tried.

“Don’t need your input either, Pat.” He could feel Patrick bristle against him as the name his friend hated fell from his mouth. Pete couldn’t find it in him to apologize though he felt a desperate kind of shame lurking in his chest. It couldn’t find its way to words among all the panic and fear. He hated this, hated being in a room full of pity and worry, hated knowing their eyes were on him and they didn’t know what to do. Hated how pathetic he must look curled up against the wall, heaving sobs and choked-up gasps. And Pete was always kind of a messy, tightly wound ball of anxiety but this was so much worse.

“Hey,” Patrick mumbled, slowly moving his bound hand over to rest on Pete’s thigh. His voice was soft and sweet and calm and Pete didn’t know how but it was cutting through the mania like a hot knife. “Your eyes on my eyes. Nowhere else. My eyes.” He squeezed Pete’s thigh encouragingly the best that he could and started breathing slow and deep. “Can you match my breathing? It’s okay, buddy. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

“It’s not okay, Trick,” Pete gasped.

“What other choice did you have, Pete?” Patrick asked, taking care to keep his breathing even. “You took _action_ when none of the rest of us could. You made a difficult decision for the survival of all of the Defenders and the mission. I know it’s kind of fucked, but you did something really brave. You don’t need to be so hard on yourself. Sometimes we do bad things for good reasons. You did what you had to do, and we’re proud of you.”

“Maybe I should’ve died. Maybe this decision wasn’t mine to make.”

“If you were supposed to be dead, you would be dead.” Pete looked away and bit his lip hard enough that the taste of blood danced faintly across his tongue.

“I’m scared, Trick,” he confessed quietly. “I’m scared I’m not me anymore and I’m scared that I am.”

“Maybe you aren’t the same, Pete, and maybe that’s okay. Because it was a choice you made, to take back your life, to take control away from them, to set yourself free. You made the choice to keep on living, which as I’m sure you know, has not historically been a choice you’ve been willing to make. You cast yourself into the gray area without hesitating even though you had no way of knowing what it would mean for you. That’s something you should be proud of. Not something to fear.” Pete took a deep breath, thoughts finally slowed down to a reasonable speed.

“Thanks, Trick.”

“And Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“So many people are going to love you. Not because you’re famous, but because you’re you. I knew you back before any of this, when you were that shitty bassist from Arma without a shred of tangible talent who didn’t have even a minor chance at becoming more than that.”

“…Thanks, buddy.”

“You know you were horrible.”

“Well, yeah, but you don’t have to point it out all mean and nasty like that.”

“You’re a big boy, you can take it. My point is, there was a time where you were the very definition of a loser, and you were still my best friend then. You’re not getting rid of me, of any of us, because we’re always going to care about you no matter how much of a mess you are. We’re used to your shit and it’s never going to make us love you any less. Even when it makes me want to wring your little neck. Cause for every time you drive me out of my mind, you’re considerate and inspirational and artistic and dependable and I’d trust you with my life. You always know what to say and what people need and I know that I could come to you with anything and you’d listen and do whatever you could to help. You’re my best friend. I like knowing you aren’t bulletproof.”

“Trick—”

“And you didn’t mess up with Ashlee. You know you didn’t. She messed up with you. You were the best version of yourself for her, and nothing you did was ever enough. She didn’t understand what she had, because if she did, she never would’ve let you go. Nothing they made you feel in that room was real. I know how it got in your head, like everything you thought you knew was a lie. So I’m telling you right now that I will always care about Pete Wentz, the loser I met when I was 16. And he should never for a second think that he doesn’t matter because he matters to me.” The warmth exploded in Pete’s chest then, safe and calm and secure. Because he still had Patrick. He still had his best friend, and even if he couldn’t thank him for all that he said without breaking down into tears, he knew Patrick already knew how grateful he was.

“I’m sorry. I know this isn’t exactly the encouragement we all need to stay on track here.”

“I don’t know about Andy and Patrick, but I’m fine with you singing the blues so long as you don’t start swallowing them too.” Joe offered. “Also, as a side note, just because I personally have to know, did you seduce that woman into untying you?” Pete looked at the ground as a light blush crept down his neck.

“I knew it!” Andy shouted. “You have _got_ to teach me how to do that.”

“He can’t help it, he’s just so handsome.” Patrick teased with a smile. Pete elbowed his friend playfully.

“Oh, shut up.” And in the warm glow of this fleeting happy moment, Pete knew what the worst part of this situation was. It wasn’t the raw fear, the searing pain, the heart-stopping worry, or the madness of killing someone. The worst part was he was completely, desperately in love with Patrick Stump, had been for as long as he could remember but couldn’t ignore it any longer. And they might not live long enough for Pete to tell him.

Patrick loved these little moments with Pete where everything felt possible and all of the bad melted away. He probably missed them more than anything else these past few days of pain and misery and alienation. He felt calm and almost at peace for the first time in what felt like forever. Yes, Pete had killed someone, and Patrick should probably be upset, but the only emotion he could find was relief that Pete was committed to the mission, that Pete hadn’t given up when things got hard.

And Pete could be a pain, had already been a pain for the majority of the time they had been in the van, Pete was a dork and an ass and incredibly easy to pick fights with, but without him, Fall Out Boy wouldn’t exist. They never would’ve gotten this chance and even if things had gone sideways in the worst possible way, Patrick was still thankful that he wasn’t in a second-rate band playing basement shows for ten bucks and a hot meal. Was still thankful Pete hadn’t given up on music to become a _lawyer_ of all things like he was so close to doing when they started Fall Out Boy. Music was their lives, and even if it had hurt them badly this time around, without it the Ativan would’ve undoubtedly got the better of Pete in that Best Buy parking lot in 2005.

Life with Pete had been… weird. Since even before all of this with the Vixens started. Unbalanced, strange, like Pete was walking on eggshells and never quite knew what to say. Patrick knew the stress was exacerbating it, making it seem worse than it really was, but he wished Pete would just tell him. Pete rested his warm hands on Patrick’s ice-cold one and Patrick felt him run through his veins, secure and comforting and eerily similar to the orange powder he remembered from the table, though without the underlying threat of unimaginable hurt if he was to pull away from the feeling.

And Pete was safe, even if things weren’t quite right. Pete was the one thing Patrick knew would stay when everything else was crumbling down around him.

Pete was someone Patrick really needed to stop thinking about before he broke down crying. Because nothing short of a miracle would allow them both to get out of this situation alive. Patrick looked for the words to ask Joe and Andy to tell their stories. He knew if he didn’t keep up this conversation nobody wanted to be having in the first place, they would be interrupted and torn away from each other before everything got out that needed to. Patrick was resentful for half a second that he always had to be the one to keep them together, keep them moving forward, and then he was reminded of the way the band functioned before the hiatus. Patrick was so shy it was almost criminal. He couldn’t lead the band, couldn’t talk to reporters, could barely make himself sing in front of a crowd some nights.

Everyone was stronger than him, but they never guilted him or got pissed at him for it. They were always strong when he needed them, they were his rock when he couldn’t rely on himself. He could repay the favor for a few hours.

Patrick cleared his throat, knowing he had to break the comfortable silence before it got any more peaceful. Talking was painful and complicated, and sitting silently was very, very simple.

“Which one of you wants to go first?” He asked Joe and Andy.

“Want is the wrong word, but I’ll do it if it needs to get done,” Joe replied. Patrick wanted to tell him that after you talk about it, things don’t seem so scary, the world doesn’t seem so horrid, the mission doesn’t seem so impossible and you don’t feel so broken. But it wasn’t true, and Patrick had told enough lies. If anything, talking about it only made it worse. But it had to be done.

“The floor is yours, buddy.”

“Awesome.” It would be great if Patrick could give Joe the same epic pep talk he had given Pete. Tell him how great he is and how much they all need him. But he knew it wouldn’t help Joe at all. Joe didn’t like that kind of attention. He’d rather just get it all out and forget about it. If it’s possible to forget about this. “So, I woke up in a straitjacket with spotlights shining on me, sitting on a stool with a microphone in front of me.”

“Was your great and terrible fate doing a standup routine so bad that everyone left?” Andy asked with a forced smile, trying and failing to lighten the mood. Joe returned a fake smile of his own.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, smartass. If I did standup, it would be so good that the standup gods would shower me with like, booze and girls. No, um, it wasn’t comedy and it wasn’t funny. I was alone for a while and then these three little kids came in, screaming and being kids, and I was so confused. I was thinking maybe I was still high from the table because child soldiers didn’t make sense with these people’s MO. And then the little shits just started throwing rotten food at me. I don’t know why it bothered me so much, they were just children, it was just food, but it felt like a nightmare. I felt frozen and scared and the dread was suffocating me.” Joe rolled his eyes at himself. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it felt horrible. Felt like the universe was conspiring against me. And then the sirens went off, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I was trapped, and there was just this despair and inevitability to it all. I guess that was the bad part. Cause, like, I’m used to kids and it was just food, but there was something about the room that got to me. And then it pissed me off that it was getting to me, and that just made it worse, if that makes sense. Then someone came from behind me, put a bag over my head, takes the jacket off, ties my hands, and bippity boppity boo, here I am.” There was a small pause and Joe forced a smile.

“Thank you for telling us that,” Patrick said solemnly.

“Did I really have a choice?”

“I’m still grateful.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome. I guess. Not like someone cut my hand off or dissected me or tried to electrocute me to death, so I don’t have that much room to talk.” Patrick looked at Joe hard, and his friend averted his eyes to his own shoes.

“Joe.”

“What?” Joe asked, not bothering to look up.

“These people are trying to use pain and suffering to divide us and make us feel alone. And if we let that happen now, we’re going to find that most of our hope leaves with it. You can’t let yourself believe that you don’t deserve to be in pain because I was tortured, or that you can’t be scared because I lost a hand. This is a war. And we have to fight together if we want any chance of survival. I can’t do this without you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Joe muttered, sounding unconvinced.

“Andy?” Patrick asked, knowing Joe would only get defensive if he pushed the envelope any further. The light that had always been in Andy’s eyes was dimmer somehow. He looked empty, like he hadn’t slept in years, and it shook Patrick to his core. Andy was the toughest of all of them. He didn’t think Andy was real scared of anything. “You’ve been called to the stand.”

“Can I plead the 5th?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Fucking bill of rights ain’t worth shit. Fuck the system.” He said it with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. A chill ran down Patrick’s spine as the grin echoed empty and vacant back at him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what happened to put such a look in his friend’s eye, wasn’t sure he was ready for the truth of his traumas. Patrick got the eerie feeling they might be worse than his own. “Okay, so imagine that the 60s, low-quality entertainment, and baby puke green had like, a hate-fucking threesome. That was the room I was in. And I was definitely rocking the straitjacket better than you posers.”

“I’m sure you made it look fabulous,” Pete commented.

“Um, everything I put on is fabulous, Peter. Don’t you see how I’m killing this disheveled captive look?”

“Oh yes, you make rope burn and bed-head look sexy as fuck.”

“Have you ever heard a noise, _outside of Pete Wentz’s voice_ , that grated on your sanity to the point where you wanted to stick scissors in your ears if it meant getting away from it? Like…” Andy’s voice was small and he sounded lost. Patrick wanted to reach out for him and hated that he couldn’t. “Like you’d rather never hear again than hear that? Well, there was a record player in the room, and the sound it made was kind of like that. It wasn’t a song, I don’t think a song could mess me up the way this did. I can’t really explain the noise, but I guess I can tell you what it was like. Like some horrible thing I had been waiting for my whole life was descending upon me. It felt like I should’ve seen it coming, should’ve been able to avoid it somehow. I don’t know what ‘it’ was, that was just the sort of feeling I had.”

Andy was still treating this like a joke when it started, but now he was staring emptily above Patrick’s head. Patrick knew the feeling, not wanting to look at anyone but not wanting to close your eyes either. He could still see the room when he closed his eyes, knew his friends could too. Patrick wondered in a detached sort of way if any of them would ever sleep through the night again when their lives behind their eyelids were almost more terrifying than the ones in the light.

“And I guess I felt like I had a really tenuous grasp on who I was and who I wanted to be. You could probably tell me I was an alcoholic Catholic priest and I’d be like shit, my dumbass was trying to be a straightedge atheist this whole time, how stupid is that? The whole time I had to keep reminding myself what I believed in, and if I hadn’t, I don’t think I’d know what that is at this point. And I’m pretty steadfast in my beliefs, they’re something I’ve never really questioned before. Now, even when it’s all over, knowing I broke edge so many times over, it still feels like I’m losing sight of who I really am. And the TV had a feed of me on it, which shouldn’t have been a big deal because I’ve seen myself on TV before. Except it felt like I was literally looking at myself in the 60s, like the fucking thing was mocking me. I felt like I was in a vacuum, pulling me backward and doing everything to suck me in and turn me into something I’ve never wanted to be.

“Then the sirens went off and the girl flipped the record, and it was like someone had taken all those feelings and dialed them up to 11. At that point, I’m not proud of this but I kind of let it drag me down with it. The noise hurt and I was scared and alone and lost and I just dissociated and let it all crash down around me. By the time they turned it off and put the bag over my head, I was basically passed out. I still don’t feel like I’m all the way back. It was just… it was too hard to keep fighting it. I don’t know how to stop feeling like this. And I hate that I gave up, but I did.” Andy paused, looked to the floor, and sighed. “So that’s me, ta-da, let’s talk about anything else.” Patrick looked for a way to thank Andy for his honesty but found that he was too horrified to address what he had been told. They hurt Andy so badly that he _gave up_ , unbreakable, unbeatable Andy. Rage bubbled up inside him that they had dared to infiltrate his friend’s mind like that, reach into him and pick him apart and turn him against himself. He was hit with the same urge he had gotten in the chapel, to rip these women to pieces, to destroy them the same way they tried to destroy the people he loved. He put it on the back burner. He didn’t want his friends to see him like that, didn’t want them to see the angry, vengeful monster that lurked underneath his skin.

Instead, in the silence that consumed the van, Patrick took a moment to figure out how he was going to explain all of this to them. Why the rooms made them feel the way they did. Why it crushed them and burned them when it shouldn’t have even stung. He sent a desperate prayer up to a God he didn’t believe in that they were ready to hear the truth.

“You know what I think?” Patrick asked.

“Probably something batshit crazy,” was Pete’s immediate retort. Patrick rolled his eyes.

“I should kick your ass.” Pete gave him a look as if to say, ‘prove me wrong’, and Patrick was beyond annoyed that what he was about to say could definitely be construed as insane. “I think that you guys are all a lot more capable than you realize.” Three mouths opened to question what the hell he was talking about, but Patrick silenced them with a glance. “I know that you probably feel weaker than you ever have, that you’re ashamed and afraid and ashamed of being afraid, but listen to me. You survived. You all survived. We were chosen for this mission because we are strong enough to live through this. They believed in us, and I see no reason for us to not believe in ourselves. We might suffer, but we will never suffer alone, because everyone is in. From this moment forward, if we survive for each other, if we live for each other, we might be able to save this mission and ourselves. But if we can’t find a way to deal with pain and fear, maybe next time we get hurt, no one gets saved. Maybe next time we just lose. And there’s more than one way for us to lose here. There’s a lot at stake. Lately it’s been seeming like life takes a lot more than it gives, but not today. Maybe today we take what we want and we make it out of here. But the worst thing we can do is give up.”

“Patrick, you’re asking us to die.” Joe protested.

“I’m asking you to **_trust me.”_**

“You’ve already lost a hand to these people.” Patrick did his best not to let his misplaced anger latch onto Joe’s comment.

“You’re right, Joe. I lost a hand. So if I’m sitting in this van with only one hand telling you that I haven’t given up hope, you have no excuse.” And Patrick knew that wasn’t fair. Especially when Joe, someone very unaccustomed to vulnerability, was feeling just as fragile and unstable as the rest of them. Patrick would be the first to admit he was having trouble adjusting to this new normal, was struggling to recognize these shattered people as his bandmates and didn’t know what they needed or how to give it to them. He didn’t know how to protect their feelings _and_ their lives, but he did know which one of those had to take precedence.

And telling them what their rooms meant, the underlying fear that fueled them, wasn’t going to make them feel good, but might just help them get out alive. That was good enough for Patrick. It had to be good enough.

A fire had to be lit under the four of them, and had to burn hotter than hell if they even wanted a chance to make it out of here with their lives, their sanity, and their mission intact.

Or, at least, two out of three ain’t bad.

Patrick opened his mouth a few times to spell it out for them, but realized he couldn’t reach the beginning and didn’t know where to end it. Andy met his eyes and gave him a knowing look, then a nod of permission. Patrick returned a small smile.

“I think I understand why everything at that hospital seemed so much worse than it should have. They figured out our worst fears, fears that have a lot to do with being in this band, and they created a place where that fear was the only feeling we could feel.” Joe frowned.

“Patrick, I don’t have a deep-seated fear of fruit being thrown at me,” he said slowly, like Patrick was stupid, like he didn’t get it. Patrick understood, maybe better than anyone, the confusion and defensiveness Joe was feeling.

“It’s not about the food. It was never about the kids or the screaming or the fruit. That feeling, you said it felt like a nightmare, like you were drowning. That’s what it was about. You’re not afraid of being pelted with vegetables, Joe. You’re afraid of your stage fright coming back to the point where you can’t get past it. You’re afraid of not being able to do the thing you love anymore because of a roadblock that you’re stronger than. Because Fall Out Boy is all you have and you don’t know what you’d do if that was taken away from you. You’re afraid we’re going to tank and fall apart and the reunion will be a flop, and you’re afraid we’ll break up and it’ll be your fault and you’ll lose the best friends you’ve ever had. That’s why it seemed so much worse than it rationally should’ve been. Because it wasn’t about what was going on. It was about what it represented to you.” Destitute silence followed Patrick’s analysis, and he wondered in a part of his brain that didn’t carry enough weight to be acted upon if he went too far by airing Joe’s innermost anxieties like that.

Patrick felt the guilt of his own hypocrisy weighing him down again. Because he held the biggest secret of them all, the only one that would actually come true. Betraying people he cared about, letting the ones he loved down when they needed him the most. Not only would it happen, but it would happen to the most important people in his life. If they needed to break down barriers and open the lines of communication again, how was it fair to keep this a secret?

It wasn’t. Patrick couldn’t justify it to himself. But he’d rather sit with the guilt and shame than admit the truth.

“…How?” Joe asked after a while.

“There had to be some explanation for why we all felt inexplicably trapped and terrified in seemingly normal situations. And I wasn’t going to make everyone rehash that and have nothing useful come out of it. I know you guys, you’ve been my whole life for over a decade. The question is, how did _they,_ people we’ve never even met, figure that all out when we can barely identify it in ourselves?” Patrick saw Joe’s fists clench out of the corner of his eye and couldn’t help but smile to himself. They needed Joe angry. There was nothing more dangerous than an angry Joe Trohman.

“So Andy,” Patrick continued, wanting to move through this as quickly as possible. “You obviously don’t have a fear of the 60s. But what you heard, that thing you couldn’t describe that made you feel like it was all an inevitable, horrible reality, that was the sound of conformity. The room represented the way everyone used to act the same, dress the same, like, if you had gotten sucked back into the 60s you wouldn’t have done very well. You would’ve had to change who you are forever or accept that you would never be safe, never be loved, never be understood. And the band can be affected by pressures to conform in the same way. Us changing our sound to please the masses might seem inevitable because almost every band ends up doing it. You’re afraid of Fall Out Boy losing its integrity for the sake of being successful. You’re afraid of living in a society where no one’s allowed to be different or stand out or exist outside of a lie, and you’re even more scared of actively contributing to that reality.”

Andy finally tore his eyes away from Patrick, mouth pressed into a firm line and jaw twitching in the way he very rarely did, only when he was right on the brink of losing control. Patrick had seen this reaction maybe twice in the whole time he had known Andy, and was immensely grateful to see a bit of the person he knew echo back in Andy’s eyes. Like maybe everything could still be okay because they hadn’t lost Andy to the shame and hopelessness that came with giving up and abandoning the things you believe in. Patrick knew he could tell Andy that Fall Out Boy would never lose who they are to become who they were _supposed to_ be. He could tell Andy that he was way too strong of a person to ever truly surrender to anything. But if Andy didn’t know that by now, well, there would be no convincing him.

Pete was the only one left and Patrick tried not to let himself fixate on the dread that was locking in his limbs, the worry that pulsed through his veins. He didn’t want to dissect how they hurt Pete, didn’t want to put words to the way they used his own mind against him. Patrick knew that the closer you were to someone, the easier it was to hurt them. That was the risk that came with letting people into your head, that you were giving them ammunition to blow you to pieces if they ever wanted to. Patrick had accepted that about his friendship with Pete and knew that Pete had too. But these women didn’t have that permission to get inside Pete’s head and find out all those things that burned black in his mind.

Patrick couldn’t help but think on all the times Pete had put his walls down to let him in, all the times he was vulnerable and weak and wounded in front of him. So many people had hurt his friend in the past, and he wondered often how the other man decided Patrick wouldn’t be one of those people. Not trusting people was a friendly habit for Pete, comfortable and safe and a shield from all the hurt. Patrick wasn’t sure if Pete had ever shown himself to anyone else the way he showed himself to Patrick. Not even Joe, Andy, or Ashlee had known the Pete he stayed up till four in the morning talking to, about anything, about everything. About Pete’s darkest thoughts, the ones that scared him the most, the ones so insane or paranoid or embarrassing that a scarlet blush would creep across his cheeks and down his neck when the words fell from his mouth.

Patrick wondered why Pete never talked to his girls the way he talked to Patrick. And Pete _always_ had a girl, if not more than one. But no matter how into them he seemed, no matter how much he swore up and down that he loved them, he would let them into his body, but not into his head. For a while, Patrick thought it might’ve been because they were girls, but when his friend finally got the guts to act on his bisexual leanings, his relationships with men were no different. Just as faintly distant and inevitably doomed as his relationships with women. He remembered one night, when Pete’s dark brown eyes held the magnitude of a black hole and he said, “Sometimes I wish I was just _gay,_ you know? I think it’d make shit a lot less confusing. At least that way I wouldn’t have to guess at if that was the problem, why I can’t stop fucking these things up no matter how hard I try. But the guys are no better. I want… never mind.” And that had been the end of it.

As much as it sometimes worried him, Patrick treasured those nights they spent in the van. Pete laying on his stomach, pouring his soul out into the black, barren silence under the cold sodium glow of the parking lot they stopped in. Pete would laugh with his whole body, or look at Patrick with sobriety and confusion in his eyes, asking a question Patrick had no idea how to answer, some nights he would even cry. The first few months after he had attempted, Pete would cry every night for hours. And even once they hit it big, it was a different vehicle, but the same guy. Trying to express thirty different emotions at once, suffering, stuttering, shaking, and talking so fast you could hardly understand him. Insomniac eyes with raccoon rings around them, and Patrick would just sit and listen in awe of how someone could be so broken and yet so perfect. Even when Pete didn’t know who he was, Patrick did.

But Pete and Patrick had chosen each other, had built a friendship on years of mutual trust and respect. These people didn’t have the right to make them vulnerable the way they had. They did not have their trust. They had not earned it.

So how did they know?

Patrick felt Pete shift under him, felt his breathing get tight and shallow in his chest. “Are you okay?” He asked under his breath.

“Just get it over with. Please.” Patrick kissed the top of his friend’s head and tried to ignore the way he tensed up, hoping desperately that he hadn’t crossed some new line.

“Okay, so, Pete, your room wasn’t as much about the press as it was about the fame. You’re afraid of people using you because you’re famous, to get what they want from you and then throw you away. You’re scared of never really being loved, never being able to let anyone in your head, and spending the rest of your life unable to build anything with someone, unable to trust someone when they say they care. You’re scared because you think since you’re the famous Fall Out Boy bassist now, nobody cares about who you actually are. And you’re worried that you’ll find somebody and you’ll ruin it, like you thought you did with Ashlee, because you’re so used to the fame and attention that you’ve somehow forgotten how to act like a considerate partner. But she wasn’t your fault, Pete. It wasn’t your fault.” Pete took a deep breath and faked a smile.

“Trick, I know you saw right through Ash and you never liked her and you were right about all of it, nothing I did mattered anyway because she and I were a disaster. But, unless you’ve got some magic person better than her who’s willing to put up with all of my bullshit, I wish you’d shut up about it.”

“You’ll find someone, buddy. She’s not it for you.” Pete frowned in an accusatory way.

“What’s _your_ room mean, Patrick? What’s your fear?” Patrick got dead silent as his breath hitched and ice shot through his veins, eerily similar to the electricity he could sometimes still feel singeing his organs.

“It’s not important.”

“To _hell_ with that.” Joe snapped. “The rest of us had to deal with it. It’s your turn. How the fuck are we supposed to trust you if you aren’t willing to hurt the same way we had to, Patrick?” Patrick wanted to ask Joe if he truly felt Patrick hadn’t been hurt enough already, but knew it was an unfair question and didn’t really want the answer.

“It’s… um… losing faith in music, you know? Like, that’s basically what they were trying to get me to do by playing it while they were torturing me. I’m scared of getting to a place where I don’t see music as something worth sacrificing for, worth hurting for and dying for. I know if I lose that, I won’t have much left to hold onto. If I lost my faith in music, everything I’ve gone through to get to this point would be for nothing, and I can’t imagine that being my reality.” Pete narrowed his eyes further at Patrick as something like despair mixed with disbelief and frustration crept into his voice.

“You think we’re all going to die, don’t you? You’re trying to inspire us, trying to fix this, trying to lead an uphill charge against these women. You’re trying to act brave and strong and bulletproof, but you’re scared and you’ve lost hope, haven’t you?”

“Fuck off, Pete. Just because you want me to be wrong about you and your fears when you know that I’m right doesn’t make me some bullshit quitter, alright? You don’t _get_ to be mad at me just because you’re mad at yourself!” Pete shrunk away from Patrick then and Patrick hated himself for the words immediately, hated that he couldn’t pretend to be okay for five fucking minutes. Hated that it took so little to overwhelm him now, that his triggers were so easy to trip over. Hated that it had never been more important for him to be whole and now was when he decided to fall apart.

“I just want there to be a way out of this for you guys. I’m sick of all of this pain being for nothing. I’m a lost cause, I’ll just slow you down, I’m damaged goods and there’s no happy ending here for me. But you guys can still make it out, you can still save the mission and survive and live the rest of your lives sane and relatively whole. If we’re gonna win this one, some of us might have to lose it. I’m okay with that, but I know I can’t convince you to give up on me, and I don’t know how to cope with that.” Patrick knew that he was fucked, but he didn’t know how to convince anyone else of the fact. There was no point trying to save him or snap him out of it, he was broken and fucked and none of this was even remotely okay. Patrick was done, which meant the band was done, and all they could still do was save themselves and the mission. Everything was wrong and everything hurt and nothing could ever be like it used to be, Patrick knew that, but they didn’t understand how important it was that they forget about him. Patrick’s self-defeating words, though they weren’t serving the purpose he had intended them for, had finally gotten Pete’s attention and drew him out of the ball he had curled himself up in.

“Patrick.” Patrick didn’t dare meet his eyes until his friend shouted again, “Patrick!” And there was terror, fury, and heartbreak in Pete’s expression, and he couldn’t bear to feel that swallow him whole, so he looked down again. “We are a team. If we’re going down, we’re going down as a team. I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to be this pillar of strength because you think none of us can stand up on our own without your help. Don’t bother. Fall apart with us. I don’t know what you’re so fucking afraid of. Just be honest with us. We’re your best friends, we would never hurt you.”

“I can get by on my own, Pete.”

“You don’t _have_ to, Trick! You don’t have to do this on your own! Why don’t you trust us?”

“It’s not that. It’s just…” Patrick trailed off. When this all began, they made a promise to protect the case from all threats posed against it. Pete, Joe, and Andy weren’t just Patrick’s best friends. They were Defenders of the Faith. If he was a threat to them, he was a threat to the case and the mission and they deserved to know.

“What is it? You’re keeping something from us when we told you everything, Trick. That’s fucked up. What are you hiding from? Tell us the truth!” Patrick opened and closed his mouth frantically like a fish out of water, no longer having any idea how he was supposed to deflect these accusations.

He had to tell them.

And as that thought ran across the folds of his fried brain, the women could be heard nearing the van. Patrick’s heart thudded against his chest and he bit down hard on his lip, nails digging into the palm he still had. Being around them had never felt _good,_ but now, after everything that went down in the chapel, now that he knew what they were capable of… he was scared to death.

“They’re coming.” He breathed. “Oh my god, they’re coming.” Patrick prayed they wouldn’t play the music. With danger literally coming at them from all sides, his friends did not need to find out they were locked inside a van with a killing machine. Pete’s hands found his leg and haphazardly squeezed it.

“It’s gonna be okay, Trick. I won’t let them hurt you,” he whispered.

“You can’t protect me, Pete. No one can.” _Protect yourself. Save yourself. Please._ Patrick looked for the words to whisper an apology to them when smoke began billowing from the front of the van and the metal surrounding them groaned with the heat.

Fire.

The van was on fire.

The van was on fire!


	6. The Mighty Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick’s body surged away from the wall that was getting hotter with every second they remained frozen in their fear. The van was on fire and they were trapped inside with arms bound and a locked door. Somehow this seemed a little unfair, even in the broad spectrum of unfair things that had been happening recently. They couldn’t truly want to kill them with an explosion when they had Patrick’s evil counterpart as an option. It seemed remarkably anticlimactic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, this is a long one. I would've split it up, but I couldn't find a good place to do it, so here are 12,000 words. Hopefully you aren't exhausted.  
> I don't love this chapter, but I've revised it to death, and I can't get myself to like it any more than this. Hopefully it's okay enough to get you through to the next one. As a side note, I am aware that I kind of suck at developing Joe and Andy in this story. I don't know as much about them as Pete and Patrick, but that's not a good excuse. I'm going to do my best to fix that in the upcoming chapters, but I totally understand if you as readers are getting frustrated with that. Constructive criticism in the comments is always more than welcome!

The Problem Solver grinned as he heard the ghosts of shouting matches and arguments dying down in the van as those four imbeciles realized how much trouble they were in. It was really only a matter of time before they turned on each other. He had done his homework, knew what had been done to their leader, and knew the selfish, foolish man would do anything to avoid his friends finding out the truth of what he was forced to become. There were so many secrets between them now, pain and fear and strife and the Problem Solver knew it would blow up in their faces. If not now, then certainly after the final pieces of the plan came together and they were felled one by one by the person they were supposed to be able to trust the most. Divides were set that could not be removed and the battle lines were drawn. They were sorely mistaken if they believed they were all still fighting on the same side.

The leader belonged to them now, and nothing could change that. He was broken, and his pieces would be put back together in a way he wouldn’t recognize. He was beyond saving, and the other three would refuse to accept that, and that would get them all killed in the end.

The Problem Solver allowed himself another small smile as the ashes smoldered beneath him. He loved this job.

The Herald watched with a quiet sort of horror as billows of smoke poured from the van the men were held in. He knew that he had to repay the favor the strange panicked man had done him, he’d be dead without him, but the Vixens were beginning to look like an insurmountable obstacle. More than he had bargained for. He knew all too well what they were capable of, the unspeakable evils they perpetrated on a daily basis, and their flippant attitude towards committing atrocities against innocent people. Well, relatively innocent in his case.

Still, he knew he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t live with himself if he let them die. He was all too aware that helping them survive might mean his own demise. But whatever they were protecting, whatever was so goddamn important that they were willing to kill and die and suffer for it, it was probably worth a hell of a lot more than his life was. Their band of minions was approaching from the other side, just a bunch of _kids_ but every bit as hazardous as the women in charge of them. He could remember one of them from his own abduction and had to concede that no matter how innocent they looked, they were each deadly in the most unexpected way. Their painted faces were split into sharp, dangerous grins and the Herald did his best to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach as he ran the other way, trying to avoid detection as one of the Vixens dropped a fire extinguisher behind the van and turned a key to unlock the doors.

He had to admit their strategy was strange. If they wanted to kill these men, it would be easy for them. They certainly weren’t averse to the idea of homicide. They’d had dozens of chances to end their lives, but instead chose to chip away little pieces and allow them to live. The Herald was sure there was a reason and wasn’t overly keen on discovering what it was. He also knew they had no such qualms about ending his life and he couldn’t be seen if he wanted to be able to save anyone. He had to hope the men were smart enough to get themselves out of the van that was no longer a death sentence.

He looked at the boy who was the reason he was wrapped up in this insane plot to begin with, running towards the van with a boom box in hand and his muscles tensed. Maybe today salvation and vengeance wore the same face paint.

Patrick’s body surged away from the wall that was getting hotter with every second they remained frozen in their fear. The van was on fire and they were trapped inside with arms bound and a locked door. Somehow this seemed a little unfair, even in the broad spectrum of unfair things that had been happening recently. They couldn’t truly want to kill them with an explosion when they had Patrick’s evil counterpart as an option. It seemed remarkably anticlimactic.

He coughed hard enough that it tore into his ribs as he attempted to blink the smoke out of his watering eyes. This was bad and only getting worse as he realized how limited his mobility truly was. Moving at all was a herculean effort, never mind actually getting to his friends and cutting their binds, which was their only chance to get out of here. “Fire,” Patrick gasped. “Fire, fire!” It bordered on hysteria, the way it came out in a rushed breath, but Patrick could no longer keep up his façade of strength and normalcy. This was _scary,_ and he couldn’t think of a way to deal with it that didn’t involve at least a little bit of panic.

“No fucking shit, Sherlock! What are we supposed to do about it?” Joe rasped out in reply.

“Just hold on.” Patrick turned to his right and nudged Pete. Not gently, more of a shove. “Pete,” he grunted.

“Nngh,” Pete mumbled back.

“Pete!” Patrick repeated, trying to force his smoke-choked voice to be louder.

“Hmmph?”

“Help me out here,” Patrick pleaded, scooting toward his friend on his knees. As Pete shuffled around to face Patrick, Patrick tried to force a disarming smile that ended up more of a grimace and motioned for Pete to give him his hands. And Pete understood, but his hands shook so violently that Patrick knew deep gashes would result if he couldn’t stop moving. It was his anxiety, and Patrick could hardly blame him, but if they couldn’t get out of this van, they were as good as dead. Pete couldn’t shut down now. He looked down at his trembling arms, then back to Patrick with a terrified and desperate look in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Pete said, voice just barely above the hysteria and panic that pulsed under Patrick’s skin. “I can’t… I can’t make it stop.” Patrick reached out for him and grasped his ice-cold hands, pulling them onto his lap.

“It’s alright, just breathe,” Patrick told him. “Please try… to hold still. I don’t…. want to hurt you.” He began trying to saw awkwardly at the ropes that bound Pete’s hands together. The hook was clunky, progress was slow, the smoke was choking him and it fucking _hurt_ like hell.

But it was this or laying down and dying. And for everything Patrick had done to stay alive, he couldn’t let it all end this way.

“Hurry the fuck up! We’re gonna die in here!” Joe coughed accusingly, like Patrick was _trying_ to slow them down, like Patrick didn’t understand how urgent this was. He wanted to shout back at Joe that anytime he wanted to chop his own hand off and then try to cut someone free with the hook that was attached in its place, then he would be more than welcome to criticize the speed at which Patrick was capable of accomplishing that task. But until then, Patrick would really appreciate him keeping his fucking mouth shut.

Instead, he went with the much more civil, “I’m doing my best!” When he turned back to Pete, his friend’s eyes had shut and his head was beginning to slump against the wall behind him “Hey!” Patrick shouted, trying to push through the pain that was now radiating up his arm with every motion he made.

“Mm?” Pete asked, eyes fluttering open weakly.

“Eyes on me. Put on… your war paint. There’s a war… to be won. I need… you here, okay? Now pull towards you.” Pete looked hesitant. “We’re running out of time, buddy.” Pete’s eyes were still unsure as he brought his elbows in towards his body. Patrick grunted with the pressure, the new action bringing excruciating pain to his mutilated arm. Despite his best efforts to keep it in, the grunt turned to a harsh, strangled scream, guttural and coming from somewhere deep inside him that he didn’t have control over. Pete stared back at him in a shocked kind of horror.

“Shit, Trick. If it hurts that bad… don’t fuckin’ do it.”

“Pete, it’s this or… we all die in a horrible explosion… I know which one… I’d prefer.” He hacked faster at the rope, biting back another scream. “Pull harder.”

“No.” Pete protested stubbornly. “I’m not gonna… hurt you like that. No fucking way.”

“We don’t have time for this! Do you think… that burning alive… will be better?”

“I don’t care, I can’t be the reason… you make that noise. They hurt you enough… Trick, don’t make me do it too.”

“I can handle it, please just… work with me.” The exertion and the smoke inhalation were making it especially hard to get the air into his stubborn lungs. If Pete was going to refuse to help him out, well, Patrick would have to do it in his stead. He sighed and leaned back on his knees, pulling for Pete.

And wow, that was a lot worse than he was expecting. A lot worse than when Pete was the one administering the hurt. The searing pain ran all the way up his arm, penetrated down to the bone and he couldn’t help but remember Alpha threatening to flay him and wondering if that could’ve been any worse than this. If anything ever was or ever could be worse than this.

“Fucking hell, Pete,” Patrick groaned through the agony, stifling the pained noise that wanted to escape the prison of his mouth by grinding his teeth into his bottom lip. The ropes suddenly snapped and Patrick flew backward, head slamming against the wall of the truck hard enough to make him dizzy. As he tried to get his bearings, he noticed with a sudden horror that he had cut the shit out of Pete’s arms in his rush to free his friend. His wrists were covered in blood, dripping everywhere, slices going several inches down his arms in some places.

Patrick cut him up like that. Patrick was already becoming the monster he feared without the Vixens’ help. Patrick had _hurt_ Pete, hurt him badly, just out of the desperation of not wanting to die, and if the guilt of that plagued him this much he couldn’t imagine the way it would crush him if he killed them.

 _When_ he killed them.

Obviously bewildered, Pete reached up for the handle of the door. Patrick wanted to shout that the doors were locked, that they would have to break down one of the walls if they wanted to get out of here. To his surprise, the latches gave way as Pete’s shaking fingers found a purchase and his friend stumbled out into the open air. Patrick couldn’t find time to be confused in the face of such a sudden burst of relief, that they weren’t going to die yet, that there was still a hope his friends could survive. Fresh, clean air flooded the van as Pete leaned back in to help Andy out, then Joe, and as he was about to reach for Patrick, the wall that divided them from the seats gave into the force of the raging blaze. The flames quickly came up to meet Patrick, and with a gasp he realized he didn’t have the strength to push himself out of this van and he was going to die in here. All of this, everything he went through, and he was going to die in here.

“Shit,” he coughed under his breath, cursing his own overestimation of the condition of his body. Pete climbed back in the van, undeterred by the threat of death that loomed before him, grabbed Patrick by the collar of his shirt, and dragged him out of the death box. Patrick fell hard to the ground, air knocked out of him, trying urgently to cough the smoke out of his burning, empty lungs. Before he knew what was happening, several kicks hit him solidly in the spine, forcing what little oxygen he could find out of his battered body and echoing hollow pain in his bones. “What the fuck?” He gasped weakly.

“You were on fire. You’re welcome.” Joe deadpanned. Patrick frowned into the grass, wondering what the fuck Joe’s problem was today. Yes, he was hurt, so were all of them. Yes, his room terrified him and violated his privacy, but that had happened to all of them. So why was he so pissed at Patrick?

Maybe the better question was: why was Patrick looking for a reason to get angry at Joe when he had never found Joe especially irritating in the past?

“If you’d prefer 3rd degree burns to a little kick,” Joe continued, “next time I can just leave you be when you start to smolder. I didn’t think you’d be up for ‘stop, drop, and roll’.” Patrick rolled his eyes as Pete dropped to his knees beside him, gently pulling Patrick’s arms out from under him and removing the rope that trapped them together. Patrick just laid there, not knowing how to get up and keep fighting when all he wanted to do was scream, cry, and sleep for the rest of his life. He tried to catch his breath as the rope from Joe and Andy’s wrists fell to the ground near him, inches away from a… fire extinguisher?

Patrick lowered his head back to the ground because he was sick of the world not making sense. Why would the Vixens set the van on fire if they wanted one of them to put it out?

In a distant part of his mind, he was grateful. At the very least, an exploding gas tank wouldn’t be their cause of death today. The raucous blast of the extinguisher quieted the roar of the flames soon after, and Patrick tried to prop himself up on his elbows, even the small motion giving him a massive headrush, and he relegated himself to the fact that he was not going to be able to get up off the ground without help. His whole body was stiff and painful, and he wished he had had any other options besides sitting still in that van for so long. He had no doubt there was running in his future, and it would be some very slow and ineffectual running indeed unless he could shake this feeling. The empty fire extinguisher fell to the ground with a dull thump, and he allowed himself a small, dry smile.

“Is firefighter going on your extensive resume now?” He asked Pete, unable to look up at him but trusting his smoke-hoarse voice could reach his friend’s ears. He was met with a strange, barren silence, as if he had been abandoned there. He could see enough shoes to know that wasn’t the case, and his guts froze as he wondered what could make them fall silent this way. The only thing he could hear was his own wheezing breaths as he called out again. “Pete? Joe? Andy?” And he knew he sounded paranoid, but the air was so still it hurt, and he needed someone to break the void that he felt growing above his head.

“Patrick,” Pete’s tremulous voice called out.

“Gimme a minute,” Patrick grunted in reply, still feeling the pain and disorientation pulsing through his veins. He was mistakenly disarmed by Pete’s voice, assuming it meant that any impending danger was far enough away for them to relax for a moment.

“Uh, no. You need to get up **now**.” Pete urged, grabbing his friend by the armpits and hoisting him back to his feet.

“Thanks, Pete,” Patrick muttered, trying to force a brightness into his tone, readying himself to rally the troops once more. But once he found his feet, he knew hope was a faraway memory and any attempts to reach out for it would be doomed to fail. A smoldering pile of ashes, cardboard, and melted plastic sprawled across the grass at his feet, embers still glowing, instruments and records just barely recognizable after the blaze had left them scarred and deformed. Broken and charred memories of things he had once been inexplicably proud of. ‘Thanks, Pete’ died in his throat as he took a deep breath, preparing himself to face the people who had dared to bring destruction to such a sacred part of their lives. Joe took him by the shoulders and turned him around forcefully.

“We got bigger problems than that, Patrick,” he murmured. Patrick saw, then, what had captivated all of their attention, and had to concede that Joe was right. The burnt remains of a pile of happy memories were nothing in the face of this new reality. Patrick stumbled back in surprise and Pete reached out to steady him before he knocked them both down. They were in big, big trouble.

This wasn’t his first experience with these hell-spawn children. Joe had been more or less terrorized by them, and one of them had been in the neighborhood distracting him when Patrick had first been abducted. That one who, Patrick noticed, seemed to be their leader now.

And there were just so _many_ of them. If they were just smaller versions of their tormentors, there probably was half a moral and not a single conscience to be found between them but plenty of sharp objects capable of slicing flesh and breaking bone. None of the four members of Fall Out Boy were at 100% or any good in fistfights, and Patrick was running at about a tenth of his usual strength, which wasn’t all that impressive to begin with.

Chains, lead pipes, screwdrivers, baseball bats, one of the kids even had a full set of bike handlebars. They weren’t shooting to injure or scare them. They were shooting to kill. There was too much to take in, not enough time to do it in, danger blasting like white noise in his ears and three people he would sacrifice anything to keep safe.

Not to mention a gang of children ready and able to redefine the word ‘anything’.

Patrick noticed the stereo far too late, and prayed there was still time for them to escape him as he shouted, “Run! Fucking run!” He looked at each of them frantically, but they were frozen in shock. Patrick turned to Pete and pushed him. Hard. Pete stumbled and nearly fell into Andy, but there was no time for Patrick to feel bad as he saw the leader reach for the on switch on the stereo. “Split up and get the fuck out of here!” And they finally seemed to get the message as they ran in different directions, the children letting out a war cry and chasing after them. It wasn’t long until only the leader and Patrick remained. A twisted smirk cracked his face as he started running at Patrick.

Having no other choice, Patrick took off at a painful sprint, every labored breath kicking against his ribs and arm throbbing under the hook. His stiff knees could barely bend, and he knew the kid was gaining on him. He would be caught, and then what? He thought about his friends, their smiles, the way their eyes would light up when they laughed, the passion and fulfillment in their eyes when they played a show and set the crowd on fire. Then, without warning, the elation transformed into agony, light and hope draining from their eyes. Blood. Blood everywhere. Blood on their bodies, blood on his hands, blood dripping from wounds and smeared across faces. And Patrick knew it was he who had done this, knew it was his fault and his disgrace and he _hated_ it, despised that there was even a 1% chance this could be his future, and didn’t know what he was supposed to fucking do.

Tragic sadness, agonized betrayal, this was the new reality that awaited him if he couldn’t escape. A second wind graced his body then, and he sent a desperate prayer of thanks to the gods of rock and roll because he needed every bit of help they were willing to give him.

“Runnin’ scared, eh? Whatcha scared of, _Trick_?” The kid taunted from the increasing distance between himself and Patrick. Patrick’s blood was caught between freezing and boiling as a name that kid had never had permission to use fell from his mouth like a taunt, like a weapon, and that wasn’t the fucking purpose of that name, shouldn’t be allowed to be used against him like this. Patrick wanted to stop in his tracks, run at this child and say screw it to the fact he was ridiculously young and pound his fists into that face. Scream at him _never_ to use that name again. Let go every bit of violence that had been building up in his muscles since the first electric shock ran through his body.

But he knew if he didn’t escape, someone was going to die. Either he was going to kill this kid, who in all honesty was probably innocent and just as scared and unsure as Patrick was, or he was going to fall victim to the stereo and go on a bloodthirsty mission to murder his friends.

And he wasn’t ready to kill someone. He had seen the way that it tore Pete apart, and he couldn’t take that.

“The hell you think you’re goin’ to, anyway? You just gonna leave your friends here with us and the girls so you can get lost in the middle of nowhere? I got a couple of buddies who can make what was done to you look like a walk in the park, Trick, you really want that for them?” And the voice was so quiet that Patrick knew he had nearly escaped, but the words made him slow his pace as they prickled across his skin. Could he live with himself if he left his friends to fend for themselves against people constantly reinventing the definition of pain?

Pain, yes. But the Vixens wouldn’t kill his friends. No, that privilege was being reserved for Patrick himself, and the only way he could give them a hope of survival was by buying them more time. It was an awful thought, a desperate thought, but a realistic one. The longer this child chased him with the stereo, the longer his bandmates had to find a way to escape this hopeless situation. Leaving them alone chafed, especially when being alone with the Vixens had resulted in the kind of misery that would haunt Patrick for the undeniably short time he had left on this earth, but he had to believe they were the smart, capable people he knew them to be. He hated himself for it, knew it was just as much selfishly not wanting to get hurt again as it was trying to save the other Defenders from their impending doom, but he had to keep running.

Conscious of the fact that the boy was gaining on him, Patrick tried to pick up his pace when his foot caught on a root and he crashed to the ground with a thud. Struggling to pick his broken body up off the ground, he knew with a crushing certainty that this was it. It was too late, and this was how it would all end. Not with a bang, but with a thirteen-year-old and a boom box. Knees bleeding through his jeans and mutilated arm throbbing, Patrick somehow found his feet. He glimpsed the kid out of the corner of his eye and felt his feet freeze to the grass, chest tightening, guts freezing. A familiar melody drifted through his ears. A pleasant memory. Pete and Patrick sitting in the back of the van, Pete throwing scraps of paper at Patrick and arguing for the sake of it while Patrick picked out melodies on his guitar. A horrible recollection. He heard the same song in the chapel.

This was it. It was happening.

“You will beg for death before the end, rebel.”

Pete, Joe, and Andy knew running like hell was their only option. Lungs burning and hearts racing, Patrick’s mantra burnt through their brains. _The worst thing you can do is give up._ Everything was at stake, chances of survival were slim and bordering on zero, and their bodies were in a sorry state indeed. But the worst thing, the _worst_ thing they could do was give up. And with all Patrick had already been through to keep this mission alive, they couldn’t let him down. Run like hell, and if they had to, they would fight like hell. Fueled by the few precious minutes they had had together and the burden of (most of) the lies lifted from their shoulders, they were ready to put up a fight.

Taking off in separate directions, they each darted into the shadows of the woods. A chain with a heavy padlock and a lead pipe were held in the hands of the children chasing Andy. It wasn’t long before he realized he had chosen the wrong path. This one was riddled with roots so tall they had to be leapt over, and Andy took a bit of solace in the fact it was him and not one of the other Defenders who was subject to the task of clearing each obstacle. CrossFit was Andy’s religion, and to put it nicely, Patrick, Pete, and Joe weren’t as familiar with the inside of a gym. Even if this was irritatingly difficult and exhausting, his bandmates would’ve found it impossible. Especially Patrick. Andy was shocked the poor man even had the strength to move.

The kids chasing him, however, didn’t seem bothered in the least by the barriers in their path and vaulted them with practiced ease. Andy could feel them gaining on him, but his survival instinct had already kicked in, and all he cared about was not finding out how those weapons would destroy his body. He didn’t want to see the chain shine with his blood, didn’t want to know the dull sound the pipe would make when it broke his skull in two.

What that survival instinct didn’t take into account was that focusing on the horrible possibilities those weapons had to offer meant not paying attention to the roots, the glaring obstructions that wanted nothing more than to familiarize him with how his blood looked soaked into the grass. When Andy spurred his burning muscles to carry him over the next gargantuan root, there wasn’t enough left in him to clear it. His shin caught the edge, bark scraping harshly against skin and sending him careening head over heels into the ground. His momentum forced him to roll two or three times before finding an eerie stillness, flat on his back on the carpet of pine needles. Andy knew the gleam of the chain wrapped around the small fist before it smashed into his head, but after that, he couldn’t think clearly enough to put coherent words to what was happening to his body. Not that his words mattered much anyway. If there was anything he had learned since being abducted by these crazy people, it’s that evil can’t be reasoned with.

Two boys, one with a screwdriver and the other with a baseball bat with nails in it, followed closely on Joe’s heels. And Joe knew, despite how badly he needed to survive and fight through this impossible situation, that he would not be able to keep this pace up without falling. Massive roots and pitch darkness spoke to that impossibility. He would fall, he would fall hard, and those kids would be all over him.

In the end, he ended up running a lot farther than he thought he’d be able to. If nothing else, he was leading a portion of the danger away from Patrick, who truly needed all the help he could get. Joe covered a lot of ground, at some points even put considerable distance between him and the kids, and started to believe that they would maybe, _maybe_ grow tired of this chase and leave him alone.

It was Patrick’s naïve and unconditional characteristic optimism getting to him. He should know better than to believe in things like happenstance, karma, or good fortune by now. That should’ve been scared out of him a long time ago.

He knew a positive outcome wasn’t in the cards for him, but he was shocked when it wasn’t a lump in the ground or a clumsy misstep that took his feet from underneath him. It was a screwdriver hurled at him, lodging itself firmly into his quad muscle. Joe let out a strangled groan of pain as he tumbled to the ground. Gasping for breath and sprawled out on his back, he was frozen with the agony and far too crippled by it to try and get up. 

His stomach sank faster than his body had as the kids converged on him, manic smiles blocking out the full moon as the screwdriver was twisted cruelly and ripped from his leg. Joe’s hand went to his wound, and the warm blood pulsed over his fingers, soaked through the denim of his jeans and staining the leg of his pants deep red. He felt the throb of it in every inch of his body and wondered distantly how much blood he could lose before his body would just give up. At the very least, this shit show would be over. He wouldn’t have to worry about the fate of rock n’ roll after his soul was condemned to serve eternity down below.

It was two of the oldest, lankiest kids coming after Pete as he ran up a steep incline. One with a cast on his arm and a switchblade and the other with a full set of bike handlebars. It wasn’t more than a few seconds before Pete could feel himself slowing down, lungs burning, already reconsidering this ill-advised route. It was quite literally an uphill battle and Pete knew he would lose, internally cursing a life of avoiding gyms like the plague. He could feel them breathing down his neck, was bracing himself for the moment when the handlebars would leaven him, when he stumbled on the sleeve of the flannel shirt he had tied around his waist and tumbled to the ground.

Oh, how Patrick would’ve laughed at him.

Here they were, being put through hell for crimes they never even committed, and Pete’s demise was going to come courtesy of his own shitty fashion sense.

Pete scooted back as fast as he could, hands up with a disarming smile on his face. He knew, realistically, that the trademark charisma he relied on to land boys and girls in his bed wasn’t going to work the same way on a bunch of apathetic, evil preteens, but words had long ago become his only real defense, so he opened his mouth to dissuade them from violence. “Hey, let’s talk about this for a minute, okay? I know you guys are probably scared of those girls, and you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, but you don’t really want to hurt—” and that was all he could get out before the handlebars came down on his prone body. He couldn’t help but think as the bruises began to form that there were a lot of things he deserved for killing that girl, and this was probably one of them.

Let’s take a moment to press pause, because you’re probably panicking a little bit, right? Understandable, and probably an appropriate reaction. Because you need blood in your body to survive, and the Defenders needed to survive if they wanted to defend the faith, and instead of pulsing through their veins, their blood was a lot of other places. Drenching their clothes, painting their lips, gleaming on an assortment of weapons, splattered on the faces of the children assaulting them, soaked into the grass and in morbid puddles underneath them. Blood was everywhere except where it needed to be, limbs and extremities and arteries.

This might not be the best time to remind you, but things will get worse before they get better. I applaud you for holding onto hope for a happy ending. In that way, you aren’t so different from Pete, Joe, and Andy. But they might be in just a bit too far over their heads this time. Children aren’t exactly known for their even temperaments, level-headedness, and restraint.

What’s yet to come is ugly, bloody, and painful. But then again, that’s what you came for, isn’t it?

As the only adult who truly acted like one in his band, Andy was in a familiar habit of being right on a consistent basis. Usually, he didn’t mind. The words ‘I told you so’ really rolled off his tongue, and being able to say them to the man-children he called his friends was a simple kind of pleasure that was easy and light. But this time, this time he wished he was wrong. Wished he was wrong in knowing he was going down, wished he was wrong in knowing these children had half a shred of remorse and not an inch of guilt between them. But he was right. Just like always. And being right usually didn’t hurt like this, didn’t bring him to the edge of death, and Andy couldn’t help but think this was cosmically _unfair._ Unfair that blunt objects could rip ragged gashes into his skin, unfair that he could feel his heartbeat in every wound and unfair that this was hopeless enough that he was having a hard time not giving up again just like he had in the room with the record player.

And deep inside, Andy knew that hope had been taken from him in a way he wasn’t sure could ever be mended. He had lost the laser focus that usually centered him, lost the will to fight a clearly losing battle. Hated himself for it, but didn’t know how to stop it from happening. Knew he was struggling to identify a path that had been clear his whole life, a path of resiliency and passion and belief in himself. But, weak as he felt admitting it, it was just too much agony, too much despair and hopelessness for him to cope with. Focus and drive weren’t what he wanted anymore, and he forced his mind to wander as chains and pipes landed on his broken body again and again.

His wayward thoughts quickly landed on Pete and latched onto him, knowing he was an easy scapegoat and too damn tired to avoid the simple pitfalls of blaming Pete for his problems. Pete had pressured him into leaving CrossFit early a few days prior because they had to go pick up the case. Andy was almost done but Pete was blowing up his phone, nagging him, rushing him, guilting him about making them all late. It was a brittle and bitter thought, that Pete could be to blame for Andy’s inability to clear the last root that had tripped him up, but it was a tremendously easy thought to go with.

It was a sliver, a part so small that it was barely even there, a bit of him that piled the blame on Pete, that truly believed every contusion, every broken bone, every jagged gash was his friend’s fault. Against his better judgment, he found himself rather desperate to find someone to blame for all of this meaningless pain. He needed to be angry at someone, needed that familiar feeling to ground him, and Andy was good at being angry at Pete. Not as good as Patrick was, but hell, everyone knew how to get pissed at the little bassist. Pete was easy to be frustrated with because he was hard to understand.

But as the pipe came down so hard that he felt ribs crack under the blow, as the air was punched out of him and the shards of bone dug into his lungs, he knew it was horribly unfair to find Pete guilty of these crimes committed against him. Pete was trying just as hard as any of them to find a way out, to salvage what was left of Patrick and the mission, to keep hope alive. Pete was doing his best, Pete was always doing his best, and even though his best sometimes wasn’t enough, it wasn’t like Andy was perfect. It wasn’t like none of this mess was a result of Andy’s negligence and mistakes.

Andy writhed on the ground, unable to recognize his angry and broken-up thoughts as his own and wondering what ugly thing had crawled up inside his brain and called it home. He was in unspeakable pain and out of things to distract him, but found one last desperate hope in his chest, that maybe his friends hadn’t befallen the same fate.

Joe had never been stabbed before, so he had no way of knowing it would feel like _this._ He had never really even considered it, hadn’t lived a life where it had ever been an imminent possibility. He desperately missed not knowing what a stab wound felt like. Wished he had counted his blessings whilst living a stab-wound free life.

He had stopped counting after seven but knew by now there were many more. The one in his thigh was still the worst, the nasty twist causing an alarming amount of blood to flow, and Joe could still remember the tearing of tendons and the scrape of metal against bone as it was yanked from his flesh. But now, after dozens of wounds from the screwdriver and bat had joined it, Joe was pain stupid and couldn’t for the life of him identify why these horrible things were happening to his body, couldn’t think of why anything would matter more than the agony. He tried to ground himself with a white-knuckle grip on the grass underneath him, breathing in the scent of earth with one good lung, trying to hide the way his breath was coming in heaving gasps in a desperate hope that they might think he was dead and lose interest.

Even though he wanted nothing more than to cry out, to scream until his lungs burned empty and raw, one of the only things his pain-fried brain still knew was that he might be left alone if these kids thought they had succeeded in their mission. He did his best to hold the air in his tightening chest, to slow down, to stay still, but the pain was sickening, and he knew it was likely that they could see right through the façade. One of them kicked him and he did his best not to flinch, then the same foot turned him over onto his back. Through fluttering eyelids, he saw bat kid hold screwdriver kid back with both hands on his shoulders and his weapon dropped by his side. Joe wished he had the strength to make a grab for the bat, but he knew the effort was beyond his broken body.

“What?” Screwdriver kid growled.

“Too much blood, he’s hardly moving.” Bat kid grunted back. It should’ve been a relief, a shadow of mercy in an endless mass of pain, but there was no remorse in the sentence. Just a cold, apathetic string of words. He remembered what Patrick had said, about these people being mission-oriented and unaffected by anything he said or did, and Joe did his best not to imagine how much worse Patrick’s pain had been than this already unbearable agony he was going through.

“You wimpin’ out on me now?” Bat kid shot him an angry look.

“Of course not, moron. But I like living, and Miss will kill us if he dies. She was pretty clear about wanting them alive.”

“Switch will bail us out if we need it. Don’t pretend you aren’t enjoying this.”

“It isn’t about what I enjoy. Let’s try not to need Switch. I don’t know about you, but having a home is what I care about, and Miss will never let us back in or trust us again if we screw this up.”

“I’m guessing you have some genius plan, then?”

“Got a plan you’ll _like_ , dickhead. We stop the big bleed, that poke you put right through his _femoral artery,_ the one that’ll kill him if we don’t stop it. Plus, we get to find out how long this wimp can play dead before he can’t take it anymore. Even you can’t say no to that.” That put an evil little smirk on screwdriver kid’s face as bat kid stuffed a bloody hand in his pocket and pulled out a lighter. Joe couldn’t stop the slight twitch that ran through his body when he saw it, and cruel laughs echoed into the silence from above him.

“Looks alive enough to me. You ever cauterize something before?”

“Nah. But I’ve seen it on TV, how hard can it be?”

And Joe was already hurt enough that he wasn’t sure he could take this. He had already become familiar with too many new and horrible sensations today to add cauterization to the list. He had learned the sound bones make when shattered by a baseball bat, had learned the feeling of drowning in his own blood, the panic of not being able to breathe after the screwdriver punctured his lung, and the empty, crushing hopelessness of knowing there was truly no one left who gave a shit if he lived or died. As they began heating the tip of the screwdriver with the lighter, Joe drummed up an image in his head of his friends, smiling and laughing and existing before all this bullshit came into their lives. If he was going to die, he didn’t want to die alone.

If nothing else, Pete was a creature of habit. Always had been, probably always would be. Habits hurt less than trying to change, even the worst ones. Pete was a complainer, Pete was a sweet little shit-talker, but no matter how he used them, Pete loved words, and loved talking. Pete especially loved talking without bothering to put a filter between his brain and his mouth. He wasn’t dumb, he had a loose understanding of what situations wouldn’t be helped by his big, stupid mouth, but he normally ignored that logic. This was one of those times Pete would’ve been better off just keeping silent, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Even though his vocal cords were fried and fucked from screaming and arguing, he refused to take a hint from them and give it a rest. If he had, maybe he’d still have more blood in his veins, but that wasn’t how Pete rolled, okay?

Instead of helping his situation, which was his hope for the words that came spilling from his lips, all he did was aggravate the children who quite literally held his life in their hands. First, Pete tried smooth-talking them. When they took that to mean he thought they were stupid enough to fall for it, he switched to hare-brained idiotic threats he couldn’t back up. He was all snide comments and clever insults and confidence for the first maybe 15 minutes, fighting back and protecting himself the best he could. While he still had the energy, he crossed his arms over his face and kicked out viciously at switchblade kid whenever he came near. Pete didn’t know what he hoped to accomplish with sharp words and half-hearted attempts at self-defense. All he knew was that they were the best shield his brain could come up with as stressed out as he was, and he was too far gone in the fear and anxiety to ignore his first impulses. Pete was already the reigning king of not thinking before he spoke on a daily basis, and now he was under enough duress that he couldn’t hope to shut his mouth.

Knife kid kept his distance while handlebar kid bludgeoned Pete up until the bassist ran out of energy and his feet found an eerie stillness against the ground, and then the gashes painted his body deep red. It happened so fast that the feeling didn’t even register in Pete’s racing brain at first. But once it hit, it hit like a fucking truck. The warm blood dripped from his arms onto his face, pain slicing through him like a white-hot blade, and finally Pete’s mouth clamped shut around his agony. The air was robbed from his lungs and when he tried to get the breath back in, his throat constricted around it and he coughed up blood. The knife kid had knelt next to him and was carving into his skin now, sharp edge biting into his flesh and Pete couldn’t take the slow agony of it. That was the first time Pete actually let out a scream, and it was breathless, dry, broken.

“Patrick!”

Even when he was in unthinkable, indescribable pain, Pete fucking Wentz still couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

 _You will beg for death before the end, rebel. Beg for death, beg for death, beg for death before it ends._ The words echoed in Patrick’s head as time slowly skidded to a stop around him, and he couldn’t tell anymore if it was the girl with Alpha or the child speaking it, just knew the words were eerily true and if any part of his body was his to command, death would be the first thing his lips would ask for.

He knew they wouldn’t kill him, knew they needed him, knew there was no end in sight until well after all his friends were gone and every last bit of him had been broken down to dust. Knew death wouldn’t come while he still knew his name, could still remember how guitar chords felt under his fingers, could still identify this song as Dance, Dance and remember how it felt to write it with Pete for months on end, negotiating every last word and note until it was perfect.

Patrick couldn’t help but think it was pretty low, even for them, to take his favorite song they’d ever written together and use it to turn him against himself. Especially when the bass line, the part **Pete** played, was what flipped the trigger inside him. He had spent countless sleepless nights perfecting that riff, bouncing ideas for how to layer the harmony off of Pete as he mentioned random scraps of lyrics to pair them with. Dance, Dance was the first thing they did that Patrick was really proud of, and they had taken that away from him, too. Rationally, he knew it wasn’t _just_ Dance, Dance that had the power to turn him, could remember from the chapel wicked overlapping guitar riffs from This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race, the strong drum beat from I Don’t Care, and his own voice on every song. He knew, but Dance, Dance was an especially low blow.

Almost two decades of blood, sweat, and tears, and it had taken the Vixens a few fucking hours to tear it all down. The song mocked him as the anger burned in his chest, igniting slowly like a flame as the melody carried on. The blood was starting to singe in his veins and the rage fucking _hurt,_ Patrick forgot how much it hurt, but somehow his body didn’t want to shut down, it wanted to move forward. Somewhere far away in a sane part of his brain that didn’t have control, he knew he should recognize the boy holding the stereo in front of him but couldn’t remember if he was an ally or an enemy. All he knew was that his fingers were itching to hurt, that the hook on his mutilated arm was sharp and more than capable of drawing blood, and that there was a flesh-and-bone creature in front of him that seemed as good of an opportunity as any.  

Then, in the blink of an eye, a dark man had taken the place of the child, his fingers on the buttons of the boom box and one hand held out to stop him. The music was gone now, cut off after “and I don’t want to forget how your voice sounds”, and the sounds and smells and feelings of the world were coming back loud and vengeful and overwhelming. Patrick’s legs got weak and he nearly lost his feet, trying to see the man through blurry vision and feeling strangely empty without the burn in his chest and the pain dancing across his nerves.

“Where’s the kid?” Patrick asked, words slurring, breath coming in labored, painful gasps, and brain feeling disconnected from the question. There was a very good chance the kid was dead by his own hand, and as horrible as that sounded, he needed to know if it was true. The man looked at him with an odd twinge of guilt in deep brown eyes as he motioned to his left where the child lay with his head twisted at the wrong angle. He was dead. **Dead.**

And Patrick was awake.

The music was gone, the hurt had receded to a bearable buzz, and it was over.

It should feel freeing, like a crashing wave of relief swallowing him up, and Patrick knew he should be grateful. But he couldn’t help but fixate on the fact he knew what the turning felt like now. Knew he would be able to see it, like a helpless spectator to his own carnage when he killed his friends. Knew there would be a powerful part of his brain that wanted nothing more than to end the lives of the people he called brothers and allies in this war. And knew that there was a child, dead at his feet, no more than thirteen, and in the blink of an eye the beat of his heart was silenced, and for all Patrick knew, he was the one who snuffed the life out of this boy.

And maybe he was evil, irredeemable evil like the girl Pete had killed at the hospital, maybe Patrick saved the world from a lifetime of crimes this kid would’ve perpetuated, but he was a fucking _kid._ Patrick wasn’t a killer, he was soft and kind and painfully normal, and this wasn’t his life. Couldn’t be his life. He couldn’t have ended this poor child’s existence. He was just a baby, and even if he was a criminal, he was just as much a victim of his circumstances as Patrick and this was all so unfair and confusing that Patrick would cry if he felt physically able to.

And he expected killing from these girls, from the people trying to ‘silence the noise’, who seemed willing to do pretty much anything from kidnapping to torture to murder to accomplish their goals, but they were supposed to be the good guys, and they were killing left and right. Patrick couldn’t help but think they weren’t much better than the evil they were fighting and hated that this would only get worse.

“Was it me?” He breathed.

“No, it was me,” the other man confessed. Patrick could barely see his face. The moonlight was soft but it hurt his eyes, like he had been asleep for a thousand years, and it took him a while to comprehend that he hadn’t ended this child’s life.

He hadn’t done it, but the kid was still dead, and there was no bringing him back. The finality of dying terrified Patrick now in a way it never had before. He wasn’t ready to die, wasn’t ready to kill, and it was batshit crazy that all of these things were real threats to him now.

“You…” Patrick said slowly, “who are you?”

“The Herald.” Those words made negative sense in Patrick’s mixed-up head, and he made a motion for the man to elaborate. “Your friend saved my life in the hospital,” he explained. And Patrick assumed that friend was Pete, but Pete hadn’t even hinted at seeing or saving anyone after his escape, and wasn’t that a good thing? Surely Pete couldn’t be ashamed of doing that, right?

“I followed you all here,” the man continued, “cause y’all looked like you needed some help and I owe him. You went all yellow and shit, figured that was bad, so I got between it. Are you good, man?” Patrick slowly shook his head no, knowing there was no way to justify saying yes. “Didn’t think so. Listen, I don’t know your problem and I don’t have time to care, but you should probably stay away from your friends until you get that shit figured out. I thought maybe it was the music, or the kid, but I figured I should stop it, so I snapped his neck.” Patrick cringed involuntarily and the Herald narrowed his eyes at him. “What did you want me to do? Figure he’s with them, you’re with the guy who saved me, your life means more than his does. Besides, you looked about ready to go on a murder rampage, that’s a problem for me too.” Patrick held up an apologetic hand.

“No… it’s not… thank you. That could’ve been really bad.”

“You better find some way to get that under control, cause I won’t be around to save you next time.” Patrick was about to open his mouth to ask what that meant, but the sound of fast footfalls reached his ears and the Herald gave him a meaningful look that stopped the question in his throat. “You should probably run now.”

“But—”

“Run, or get caught by them again, and then me and the kid both died for nothing. I’m staying either way, so the choice is yours.” Patrick hated himself more than a little bit as he turned on his heel and ran the other way as fast as his legs would carry him. He knew he had to disappear, get out of sight and as far away from his friends as he could. Screams of pain echoed behind him, and Patrick knew it was the man who saved him, but he didn’t turn around, didn’t even look back. The man knew that staying and waiting for these evil people to descend upon him would mean certain death, and the best he could do now was try to make that death mean something.

Patrick was far enough that the chances of them finding him were minimal (though they never quite reach zero, do they?) when a horrible scream stopped him in his tracks. So far away that it couldn’t possibly be real, someone was shouting his name. “Patrick!” Clinging onto the word like their last chance for survival, no one could possibly scream like that and live. It didn’t sound like the man who had helped him, it sounded like _Pete._ And as much as Patrick wished it wasn’t his friend, wished that he had traveled far enough to get Pete out of harm’s way, he knew his friend’s voice and it couldn’t be mistaken as anything else. And it wasn’t a ‘where are you’ scream, it was an ‘I feel like I’m going to die, and I need you’ scream. Patrick felt so much empathy for his friend’s plight that he physically felt pain in his chest, stomach churning with the fact he couldn’t help, there was nothing he could do but bear witness to his friend’s suffering.

Another scream echoed through the trees, no words and all pain, and Patrick felt the hurt like it was his own. Every move he had made so far was to try to protect his friends, protect them from the Vixens, protect them from himself, protect them from the world, and it hadn’t been enough, nothing he did was enough to save Pete from this. Patrick knew he couldn’t go to Pete, couldn’t try to protect him, because it would put him in worse danger than he was now. Patrick was the biggest threat to his friends’ lives right now, but Pete didn’t know that, and Pete was calling for him, needed him, was still screaming for him in a way that sounded wet and choked with blood and fear.

Patrick knew he had to run the other way.

Pete was hurt, maybe as bad as Patrick was when he was alone with the Vixens that first night without his friends, and Patrick wanted to hold him and protect him and tell him everything would be okay, but instead he was going to run.

He ran so hard for so long that his legs felt weak enough to fold under him at any given second. The paranoid bits of him wanted to run till he collapsed from exhaustion, but the dominant, rational side knew he had to get out of sight now. He slowed to a stop and gratefully collapsed under the brush of two huge pine trees. Heart nearly pounding out of his chest, fried nerves pulsing pain through his body, he laid down and tried to catch his breath.

As his body and thoughts slowed down to a heavy buzz, the severity of their situation came down on him like a boulder, left him suffocating in the reality of it. It wasn’t like Patrick didn’t understand how bad things were. He knew from the start, knew it well before his friends joined him. He lost a _hand._ He knew these people were evil, sadistic, irredeemable. Unfeeling. But he was realizing there had still been a bit of hope stirring in his chest, a small flame refusing to be extinguished, and actually seeing his body turn from his control was enough to blow out that last little fire.

Now Patrick knew their lives were over. No matter what happened now, even if they all lived through this, Fall Out Boy was done. Patrick couldn’t even hold a guitar anymore, Pete had killed someone, they were all traumatized in indescribable ways and it was only getting worse. None of them could ever be normal again. Patrick couldn’t even hear his own music without completely losing control of his mind and body.

Maybe the worst part was that he could feel something inside him breaking and could see it falling to pieces in his bandmates too. Their humanity. Pete killed a girl to survive, Patrick watched a little kid die and didn’t even flinch, and he let a man die in his place without batting an eyelash.

If what these women were trying to prove was that deep down everyone was as ugly as them, they were succeeding.

That was the last coherent thought that made its way through Patrick’s broken mind before it tripped, stumbled, and fell into the dark, nightmare-ridden abyss of sleep.

Pete, Joe, and Andy were somehow finding their feet after what felt like years of being beaten into the grass beneath them. Shoes soaking up blood from the puddles under them, it wasn’t a fast gait, but it was a desperate one, and that was enough. The boys didn’t bother trying to follow them. They had succeeded in their mission, and Miss liked her victims to still have a bit of hope so she could take it away herself. They started making their way back home, knowing their boss would be pleased.

The remaining members of Fall Out Boy couldn’t find it in themselves to be happy with their escape when they knew it would be temporary. The inevitability of being caught and taken back to the Vixens was heavy and weighed them down like an anchor. They didn’t know their way through the forest, didn’t know how to find each other, but they did know that from square one these women had been two steps ahead of them and there was no way that this escape wasn’t a part of a bigger trap. All they had left to do was run and run until fatigue tackled them to the ground.

If he was being honest, Andy didn’t know how he was up and running away when he easily had four broken ribs and god-only-knew what else. The pipe had come down on his calf pretty damn hard, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he was currently exacerbating a broken fucking leg. All he knew was he couldn’t wait around to be bludgeoned to death, he had found an opening, and it didn’t matter how much running hurt, it couldn’t be worse than getting the ever-loving shit beat out of him.

He was limping at record speed in a nearly pitch-black forest with a body more broken than he’d known a body could be, and he knew he couldn’t keep it up for long, knew that no amount of workouts and eating right could make this any more than an impossible task. He couldn’t even keep going until he tripped and fell, he just straight up crumbled to the ground in a clearing, ten feet from trees on all sides. He knew this was a bad position, too open, too vulnerable, but he couldn’t convince his body to keep going any longer. His breathing was uneven, shallow and shuddering and painful, and a long-defeated part of Andy’s brain wondered why he was still alive and wished he wasn’t.

With the broken ribs had come a jagged gash over them, and Andy placed a shaking hand under his shirt against the wound, feeling the blood pulse over his fingers. He hated that breathing was necessary to life because nothing had ever hurt worse than the continuous expanding and retracting of his torso, deep aching pain in his broken bones and sharp searing agony splitting open his skin. Giving up had become a much too familiar feeling for Andy, but this time, he didn’t even have the energy to hate himself for it as he gratefully let go of consciousness and left the hurt behind.

Somehow, using energy that he thought had been long beaten out of him, Joe got up and away from that lighter. Not unscathed, far from it, but the burns surely weren’t as deep as those little brats were hoping for. Playing dead hadn’t worked out so well for him, had gone straight out the window when the red-hot tip of the screwdriver made contact with the gushing wound in his leg. There was no playing dead through the sear of fire on flesh, only screaming, gasping, and writhing. That, or dying for real. No matter how bad things had gotten, Joe was still pretty sure he didn’t want to be dead for real.

The kids jumped back in surprise when he made it to his feet, and one of them nearly threw the screwdriver at him in his shock. Maybe they thought he was a lot closer to real dead than he actually was, or maybe Joe was shot so full of adrenaline that he couldn’t see that he was very close to death, but Joe was limping at record speed away from them and they didn’t seem to care enough to follow.

So that was how Joe ended up lumbering through the forest with a half-cauterized, half-bleeding leg wound and covered in blood from the dozens of punctures in his skin. He had no way to make the bleeding stop but he was somehow still successfully running away and knew he had to keep going. Keep going, ignore the warm trickle of blood down his back, the throbbing in his thigh, the red pulsing steadily from the hole in his lung. He still wasn’t sure how he got back to his feet, could only remember being stabbed, clobbered, and burned, and then it miraculously ending. And now he had somehow gotten away.

Once he realized he wasn’t being followed, Joe dove under a tree with low-hanging branches and breathed a sigh of relief. With no more than his labored gasping to keep him company, Joe gathered up his last remaining strength and pushed himself up against the tree. He knew after the copious amounts of blood he had lost, blood he was still losing, there wasn’t a worse idea than falling asleep. His exhausted bones had other plans. And there wasn’t enough fight left in his body to argue. If death was coming, it would meet him with the same degree of misery if he was asleep.

Life hurts. Pete knew that life hurt. He’d known that for the majority of his life. It used to be that life hurt all the time, with small breaks of happiness that were far too good to last, and it had been a while since he had felt that way, but he didn’t appreciate how similar this whole experience was to his life before he got help. First, he was terrified and guilty, seeing Patrick’s hand and getting kidnapped, then he was elated and delusional and _kissing Patrick_ _,_ then killing a woman out of sheer desperation, then talking to his friends like everything was fucking normal and okay, and now he was running away from a bunch of punk kids who hit and cut and hit him. One big shitshow with little intermissions of okayness, and that feeling was so familiar to Pete that it hurt to feel it stare back at him.

Despite the inevitability that loomed over his head, that they would be caught and hurt again and it was only a matter of time, he got a small rush from being able to escape. Getting to his feet, taking off at a sprint, even if he was bleeding and bruised and slashed to bits, they weren’t following him, and he was proud to know they hadn’t beaten all of the fight out of him.

Pete’s exhausted muscles were crying out for him to stop running, but it wasn’t until he tripped over a root and got a mouthful of grass that he conceded he was probably far enough away from danger to take a break. He dragged himself to one knee and braced himself with an arm on the tree root in front of him, well hidden beneath a canopy of leaves and branches.

Then his mind got to work.

_Why have they stopped looking? Are they waiting for us somewhere in the shadows? Will we die out here trying to survive in this gigantic forest? Were his friends dead already?_

It took about two seconds of calm and quiet for Pete to get paranoid. And if that surprises you, you clearly haven’t been listening to a single word I’ve said this whole time. Pete tried to remember the words Patrick would give him when he worked himself up into a fit over some little shit that didn’t matter. _If you can’t control the thing, the least productive thing you can do is worry about it until your head explodes. If you don’t let go of it, it’ll never let go of you._

But then all Pete could think about was Patrick. Patrick with unexplainable fear in his eyes when he saw the kid with the stereo. Patrick who was way too injured to outrun anyone or defend himself from anything right now. Patrick who could be dead already for all Pete knew. It hadn’t been long since he had last seen his friend, but he would do anything now to ask Patrick what he was supposed to do. Really, he would do anything just to hear Patrick’s voice.

Pete realized then that it didn’t matter what the right thing to do was, worrying was so exhausting that doing anything was far beyond him. He conceded that Patrick was the most capable person he’d ever met, and he certainly didn’t need help from a degenerate like Pete who would probably just slow him down and bring Patrick down with him. If he trusted anyone, he trusted Patrick, and Patrick didn’t need his help to survive. Obviously. Pete tried to take Patrick’s advice and let go of this useless paranoia and finally, blessedly, drifted off into the first peaceful moment he’d had since he found Patrick’s hand. Since he was first approached with the mission, if he was being honest with himself. He had forgotten what real sleep felt like.

••••

Alpha and one of her subordinates stood stoically over the Herald’s dead body, blood splattered on their remorseless faces.

“We’ll have to send Switch out,” the other woman said.

“Give it till morning. They’re in rough shape, need some time to recover. It might take us a little while to locate them. Besides, we could use some more time to prepare for the next phase,” Alpha reminded her.

“I’m so jealous of you. Are you excited?”

“It’s a job. Nothing more. I’ve done these countless times.”

“C’mon, you can tell me. You’ve got to be thrilled that you get to do it.”

“Soldier, for the last time, it’s unprofessional to feel anything when it comes to these insurgents. That’s a problem they create, and if we fall victim to it, we become more susceptible to their inevitable manipulation. Miss would be disappointed in you. We must stay neutral in these matters. Once we start taking joy in our work, we become vulnerable.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I don’t know about you, but I learned a long time ago not to let my useless emotions get in the way of my work. You have to remember that our ability to resist emotions like pride and excitement and joy is what separates us from these animals we’re eliminating to protect the world. So no, I’m not excited. I don’t feel much of anything anymore. That’s how we’re trained. That’s what we’re meant to do. And I will do my duty, just as I always have. This is my mission, and I will complete it. I will not fail.” And with that, she left to go find Switch for his assignment in the morning, still unsure of what she would do when the chips were down and the decision was hers to make the following day.

It was true that she wasn’t excited about it. Most of what she felt was nauseating fear. She wasn’t sure what was worse, her fear of what Miss would do to her if she failed or her fear of what would happen to that man if she succeeded. She had never been motivated by fear in the past, didn’t operate based on fear of being wrong but rather because she knew what she was doing was right.

Now she didn’t know anymore where the truth was or how to find it. What she did know was that she couldn’t fucking sleep at night with his screams echoing in her head, couldn’t close her eyes without seeing his agonized and terrified face, and couldn’t go through her day without constantly being reminded that she had _helped_ him, had taken pity on him, and if Miss knew that she would be dead already.

Being unsure was so unfamiliar to her that she couldn’t help but feel the panic set an electric fire in her veins, and it had been so long since she had felt that pain that she almost collapsed with the sudden rush. It was an impossible decision. Help the insurgents and betray her sisters, or stay loyal to the mission and live the rest of her life with this horrible crushing guilt that haunted her now. She didn’t know if she’d be able to live with herself either way.

This was her life, the only life she had ever really known, and leaving it would mean certain death. But following through with the plan and picking apart the last bits of sanity they had left that man with, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to live with herself if she went through with it.

Alpha quickened her pace and reasoned that while neither of her options were quite right, both would mean this nightmare would be over soon.


End file.
